MEDICAL RESEARCH

Medical research is demanding and complex work. From laboratory discovery to clinical application, it can take decades for an idea to develop into a treatment that changes lives. It depends on persistence, collaboration, and sustained investment in the earliest stages of scientific inquiry.

Between 2005 and 2025, The James Tudor Foundation contributed to that collective effort through its medical research funding programme. Over two decades, the Foundation awarded 140 grants totalling £4.4 million to universities, research charities, hospitals and hospices across the UK. Its approach centred on enabling early exploration – providing flexible support at a stage when other funding is often hardest to secure.

The programme focused on two main goals: advancing the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, and improving how healthcare is delivered and evaluated. Most awards supported early‑stage discovery science, including disease modelling, treatment development and prevention studies.

Additional funding was directed to healthcare evaluation and hospice research, linking innovation with practical insights from clinical and care settings.

Support extended across the research pipeline, from discovery and pre‑clinical development through to early‑phase clinical trials, hospital‑based work and observational studies. Alongside research projects, the Foundation provided funding for doctoral studentships, clinical fellowships and specialist research posts – helping to strengthen skills and capability within the medical research workforce.

Universities were the main recipients of funding, complemented by support for medical research charities and healthcare institutions. Many of the projects were modest in scale but contributed important groundwork for future study and larger‑scale discovery.

As the medical research programme concludes, the Foundation’s legacy within the field remains one of early‑stage investment, partnership and curiosity – a recognition that progress in medicine depends as much on the first question asked as on the breakthrough that follows.

Disease modelling was the largest element of our medical research funding by volume and was central to the overall programme. We awarded 47 grants across 13 institutions totalling £1.59 million.

These grants supported a substantial number of PhD studentships, fellowships and research projects aimed at understanding disease mechanisms before effective prevention, diagnosis or treatment could be developed. This included work on brain tumours, cancer metastasis, dementia, neurological and mental health conditions, inflammatory disease and eye disorders.

Much of this funding was concentrated in long‑term relationships with institutions such as Nottingham, Bristol and Liverpool. By supporting multiple projects and students within the same research environments, we aimed to build depth, continuity and institutional expertise over time.

We recognised that disease modelling often did not lead directly to immediate clinical applications, and that many projects resulted primarily in training outcomes or academic publications. However, this was inherent to the nature of the research. Understanding how disease develops and progresses is a necessary foundation for progress elsewhere in the research pipeline.

Through sustained investment in disease modelling, we contributed to the underlying scientific knowledge that supports advances in prevention, diagnosis and treatment. This long‑term perspective characterised much of the programme and reflected our belief that meaningful medical progress begins with understanding.

Treatment development was one of the most substantial strands of our medical research funding. Over the lifetime of the programme, we awarded 47 grants across 18 institutions totalling £1.45 million.

These grants supported a wide range of projects focused on developing new treatments or improving existing ones, often at very early and uncertain stages. Much of this support went to universities through research projects and PhD studentships, helping to build both scientific knowledge and research capacity.

Our funding covered a broad range of conditions, including cancer (breast, ovarian, prostate and childhood cancers), neurodegenerative disease, inflammatory disorders, eye disease and rare conditions. We deliberately chose to support work that required time to develop, recognising that genuine treatment advances are the fruit of decades of investigation.

In several areas, we provided sustained support rather than one‑off grants. This included long‑running programmes in stem cell research at the University of Bristol, SMART bandage technology at the University of Bath, and research into tissue repair, burns and wound healing. We believed that continuity was particularly important in helping promising ideas progress towards clinical relevance.

Alongside universities, we worked closely with medical charities to support treatment development in areas such as cystic fibrosis, tuberous sclerosis, endometriosis and transplantation medicine.

While not every project led to a clear clinical outcome, many contributed to publications, further research funding, early clinical studies or industry engagement. Overall, our treatment development funding reflected a willingness to back complex challenges early and to accept the uncertainty inherent in innovation.

Prevention and diagnosis formed an important part of our research funding programme, particularly where early intervention had the potential to improve long‑term outcomes. We awarded 25 grants across 9 institutions totalling £810,000.

A significant proportion of this funding focused on women’s and children’s health, including pregnancy complications, pre‑term birth, miscarriage risk and fetal development. Much of this work was delivered through long‑standing relationships with charities such as Tommy’s and Action Medical Research.

We also supported cancer prevention and early detection projects, including work on bowel cancer prevention, breast cancer detection, ovarian cancer diagnostics and emerging biomarker‑based tests for asthma. Many of these grants took the form of PhD studentships, reflecting our commitment to supporting future clinical and academic leaders as well as generating new evidence.

Infectious disease prevention featured within the programme, most notably through meningitis research that progressed to early clinical development. While prevention and diagnosis research often produced incremental advances rather than immediate breakthroughs, we saw this work as essential to reducing disease burden over time.

Our approach in this area tended to favour a wider spread of relatively modest grants, supporting multiple ideas and institutions. This allowed us to contribute to a diverse portfolio of early‑stage research aimed at earlier diagnosis, risk reduction and improved understanding of disease pathways.

Treatment evaluation represented a smaller but meaningful component of our funding portfolio. We awarded 10 grants across 7 institutions totalling £340,000.

These grants were largely hospital‑based and focused on understanding how treatments, technologies and care pathways performed in real‑world clinical settings. We funded evaluation studies across a range of areas, including chronic pain, cardiovascular disease, neurological conditions, surgical techniques and symptom management.

Much of this funding supported people and infrastructure, such as research nurses, specialist clinical posts and equipment, rather than laboratory research. We recognised the importance of this work in embedding research into everyday care and strengthening the evidence base that informs clinical decision‑making.

Some treatment evaluation projects demonstrated clear benefits and contributed useful evidence, even where wider uptake was constrained by NHS funding or service capacity. Others had mixed or less clearly articulated outcomes, particularly where reporting back to funders and the public was limited.

Despite these challenges, treatment evaluation funding reflected our interest in practical, patient‑focused research and our recognition that improving care depends not only on new discoveries, but on understanding how existing interventions work in practice.

From the very beginning, one of The Foundation’s objectives had been to invest in research with strong potential to make a positive difference to patients. In April 2024, mindful of the significant long-term financial commitments required to deliver tangible progress from the bench to the bedside, we decided to close our Medical Research programme.

In making this decision, we reflected on the changing needs of the health charity sector, the pressures facing service delivery charities – particularly hospices – and the need to safeguard the long-term sustainability of our funding model.

Redirecting resources from the Medical Research programme has enabled us to provide greater support to charities working directly with their communities today.

Although we no longer fund medical research directly, our commitment to improving the patient experience remains central to our mission. Through our current funding programmes, we continue to back organisations that are enhancing care, strengthening services, and improving health outcomes across a wide range of settings.

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Medical Research

Theme: Disease modelling

Theme: Treatment development

Theme: Prevention and diagnosis

Theme: Treatment evaluation

What we have learnt and how this funding programme has evolved