Grant winners – 7 July 2016

A round-up of recent recipients of research council cash

July 7, 2016

THE reporters

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Research grants

Award winner: Elaine Hobby
Institution: Loughborough University
Value: £752,247

Editing Aphra Behn in the digital age (E-ABIDA)

Award winner: Catherine Boyle
Institution: King’s College London
Value: £2,898,430

Language acts and worldmaking

Leverhulme Trust

Research Project Grants
Sciences

Award winner: João Pedro de Magalhães
Institution: University of Liverpool
Value: £304,873

Data-driven discovery of correlations between genes and ageing-related changes

Award winner: Ian Davies
Institution: Liverpool John Moores University
Value: £127,026

New frontiers in lipoprotein analysis: small molecules, big questions?

Award winner: Vasilios Stavros
Institution: University of Warwick
Value: £314,841

Unravelling photoprotection pathways in plant sunscreens

National Institute for Health Research

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme

Award winner: Andrew Horne
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Value: £944,871

GEM3: A multi-centre double-blind placebo-controlled randomised trial of a combination of methotrexate and gefitinib versus methotrexate alone as a treatment for ectopic pregnancy

Award winner: Liona Chiu Yee Poon
Institution: King’s College London
Value: £661,635

Screening programme for pre‑eclampsia (SPREE)

Health Technology Assessment Programme

Award winner: Esther Crawley
Institution: University of Bristol
Value: £994,430

Investigating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of using FITNET to treat paediatric CFS/ME in the UK

MRC/BBSRC/ EPSRC/ESRC

Joint awards by the Medical Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council

Cross-council awards to tackle antibiotic resistance

Award winner: Christoph Wälti
Institution: University of Leeds
Value: £3.8 million

Accelerating development of infection diagnostics for patient management and reduction of antibiotic misuse

Award winner: David Dockrell
Institution: University of Sheffield
Value: £3.5 million

Optimising innate host defence to combat AMR

In detail

Award winner: Andrew Bailey
Institution: University of Bristol
Value: £2.2 million

Exploring nature’s silent pharmacy

Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was derived from fungi in 1941, and the organisms have continued to be an important source of antimicrobial drugs ever since. This project will use contemporary technology to revisit old compounds in the hope of discovering new benefits that might have been missed first time around. Cutting-edge computing methods will allow researchers to sequence the entire genome of a fungus, which was not possible before with traditional drug discovery methods. This could point researchers to a wide range of undiscovered natural compounds that, if bioactive, could lead to much-needed new types of antibiotics.