The aim of the Infections and Immunity Board (IIB) is to develop our scientific understanding of human infectious disease and disorders of the immune system, translating these insights into health benefits and ensuring that the UK has the infrastructure, skills and expertise it needs.
The Infections and Immunity Board (IIB) aims to develop scientific knowledge that extends our understanding of human infectious disease and the role of the immune system in inflammation, immune-mediated disease, and cancer.
This includes research into human pathogens and their mechanisms of infection, diseases of the human immune system, and conditions where altered immune regulation leads to pathology.
The board seeks to support a diverse portfolio of research that is relevant to the UK and the wider world and spans the full remit of the board, addressing established questions and areas while catalysing investigation of emergent opportunities.
Our science areas
IIB supports investigator-led grants, strategic investments and partnerships relevant to infectious human disease and disorders of the human immune system in the following science areas:
Human pathogens
Understanding pathogen biology, human host responses for bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi, and human disease vectors, including research to elucidate mechanisms of disease and inform diagnosis, treatment and prevention of infection
Immune-mediated disease and multimorbidity
Understanding how our immune status can contribute to disease, including research into allergies, transplantation immunology, systemic immune disorders, auto-immune disease, and immune oncology
Immunology and inflammation
Research into the development, function and disorders of the immune system, including inflammation and immune homeostasis, where this informs mechanism of immune pathology or immune dysfunction
Resistance
Investigating the mechanisms and drivers of resistance at the pathogen, human, and population levels, including research to allow for the prevention, detection, and control of resistance
Chronic infections
Research into how long-term infection can interact with and affect the host immune system over the life course, how the immune system might be modulated to better target persistent infections and what triggers emergence from latency (including co-infections)
Co-infection
Understanding how infections (both commensal and invasive) affect the host immune system and interact with other pathogens
Epidemiology and transmission
Understanding the mechanisms of immune mediated disease or pathogen evolution and transmission using epidemiological approaches to elucidate disease risk, including identifying factors impacting immune regulation, disease susceptibility, and discovering emerging risks (including zoonotic, resistant and re-emerging pathogens)
Vaccines
Early vaccine development (up to proof of concept), comparative vaccinology, early development and understanding of adjuvants and immunomodulation, human challenge models and the role of therapeutic and protective antibodies.
Biomarkers and diagnostics
Early development research to inform biomarker discovery and provide pathways towards novel diagnostic tools and approaches relevant to infection, preparedness and resistance.
Therapeutics
Early development research to investigate novel mechanisms and strategies for preventing and controlling infectious and immune disease, including immunomodulation and novel immunotherapies.
Global health
Global health research remains a strategic priority for MRC, and IIB is keen to receive applications in this area that fall within the board remit. Notable opportunities include research that explores the links between environmental exposure and human disease in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Applications addressing topics of health relevance to low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are therefore welcome. Such applications must consider and describe how they will ensure equitable collaborations based in those countries.
What we will not fund
IIB will not fund:
- applications focused on delivery of surveillance and detection programmes – such work could only be eligible as a minor, facilitating component if critical to enable a wider holistic programme of research
- proposals focused on the optimisation of an existing surveillance technology to different circumstances, without a focus on driving new insights into pathogen biology or epidemiology
- proposals aiming to investigate plant or animal infections without direct linkage to human disease, which should be directed to the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
- proposals investigating mechanisms underpinning normal tissue physiology or healthy human immune function, which should also be directed to BBSRC
- translational development programmes seeking to advance products or tools towards specific clinical indications – see the Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme.
Related MRC schemes
The development or improvement of generalisable health and biomedical research methods is specifically supported via the MRC-NIHR Better Methods, Better Research Programme.
For studies undertaking the development, validation or evaluation of new products or interventions, see our translational research and applied global health funding.
For applications for funding of new or existing longitudinal population studies see Longitudinal Population Studies Strategic Advisory Panel.
MRC welcomes queries from potential applicants. Questions on remit, scope or fit to our funding schemes should be directed to the relevant Programme Manager or by email to: IIB@mrc.ukri.org.
Together with the rest of UKRI we seek to embed equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in all we do, to ensure that we embrace a diversity of thought, people, geographical locations, and ideas in our research funding, and encourage applications from underrepresented groups.
Find out more about EDI at UKRI.
IIB priority areas
IIB has identified several priority areas for UK-led infections and immunity research where timely investment has the potential to catalyse new avenues for future discoveries.
These areas are described in the following sections and will be prioritised by IIB during funding discussions, together with the MRC-wide priority areas, for applications in the fundable range. We encourage applications that focus on these areas.
Immune regulation
Immune response to acute and chronic infections, and in the context of complex immune-mediated diseases and cancers are often heterogeneous, with patients showing differential responses to vaccinations, biological medicines and other targeted interventions.
To understand the drivers of these different responses, IIB will prioritise high quality applications seeking to understand how immune sensing and regulation is influenced by factors including:
- different stages of the life course, including ageing
- socioeconomic or cultural drivers, including ethnicity, geography, or deprivation
- biological sex or gender identity
- diet or metabolism
- co-morbidities or co-infection, considering the complex and heterogeneous nature of human disease in infection and immune-mediated disease
- environmental exposures
- genetic traits of disease susceptibility
Pathways to effective solutions for antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobials are a cornerstone of modern medicine that treat millions of people worldwide. They are used in the treatment of minor and potentially life-threatening infections in humans and animals.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites undergo adaptations that make them less susceptible to the drugs used to treat them, making infections harder to cure, and causing harm to humans and animals. Resistant pathogens spread through people, animals, food and the environment, creating a major public health threat.
IIB will look to prioritise applications with a primary focus on solving key areas of need in AMR. Proposals should seek to:
- build mechanistic understanding of pathogen biology for target discovery unlocking future routes for novel antimicrobials (including combination treatments and the repurposing of existing drugs)
- identify drivers of emergence and transmission of resistance
- discover pathways or biomarkers towards diagnostic point-of-care-testing and alternative therapeutic tools (including phages) to reduce dependence on antimicrobials
Proposals addressing these priority areas should identify real-world routes to application (cost-effectiveness, acceptability, usability and desirability), ensuring that studies are designed to maximise the likelihood of uptake.
Tissue immunology
The cells of the immune system interact with and are influenced by their specific tissue microenvironment as they coordinate responses to challenges such as infection, inflammation and malignancy to maintain immune homeostasis. Studying immune responses outside of this tissue environment may lose the context of these interactions and their consequences.
New and emerging technologies are allowing the study of immune function within the complex tissue environment, enhancing the translatability of research. The board will prioritise high-quality applications that utilise innovative techniques (for example organoids, tissue spatial and omics studies) to explore infection and immunity in situ in the context of the relevant tissue environment, localising cell-pathogen interactions or immune-regulated disease processes.
Research should incorporate relevant chemical, cellular, stromal, and physical cues and explore the local (and potentially where relevant, systemic) impacts of infection or immune disease. A range of methodologies and models should be integrated, models utilised do not need to exclusively be human and can include animal models and tissues where appropriate.
Understudied pathogens
Pathogens that pose significant risk can sometimes be insufficiently researched such that our level of understanding, mitigation capabilities or research capacity is not always aligned with the level of associated threat.
Such ‘understudied pathogens’ may be emerging, re-emerging or endemic, and include those causing zoonotic disease, fungal disease or considered as Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs).
The understudied nature of such pathogens may have arisen from:
- their fundamental novelty, typically for emerging zoonotic disease
- previous deprioritisation within the UK and elsewhere, potentially driven by the success of established countermeasures, for example, vaccines that may no longer be used effectively
- difficulties working with such pathogens in the lab, which may be overcome by new and innovative models
IIB will prioritise high-quality applications addressing such pathogens. Applicants must clearly articulate the relevance of their proposed work, laying out the need for focusing on the pathogen, why the specific pathogen is understudied, how the research aims to tackle this, and that the pathogen is poorly addressed by existing investments.
MRC priority areas
In addition to the IIB priority areas, MRC maintains several overarching priority areas which apply to all boards. These are:
- new investigator research grants: supporting early career researchers towards becoming independent investigators
- experimental medicine: understanding disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets using human participants
- advanced therapeutics: using non-pharmaceutical approaches, including cell/gene therapy, regenerative medicine, nucleic acids, antibodies and other innovative medicines
- myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS): supporting high-quality research into ME/CFS
IIB additional activities
Infectious and immune diseases are major global threats, requiring a strategic and integrated response. Accordingly, alongside the core funding provided through regular board rounds, the Infections and Immunity Board supports and enables a broad portfolio of related activity within the MRC, across UKRI and in partnership with the UK and international landscape.
Preparedness
The recent outbreaks of COVID-19, MPox and H5N1 avian influenza and the ongoing global burden of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV illustrate the large-scale challenges that infectious diseases continue to pose to human health.
In addition to contributing to preparedness research for a future outbreak through underpinning research supported by the board, IIB coordinates other relevant research on behalf of MRC, outlined in the following.
International and co-funding opportunities
Tackling infections: a cross-UKRI strategic theme to enable working across disciplines and leveraging new and existing investment and activity – it will bolster our national defence and response capabilities by tackling infectious diseases that pose threats to people, livestock, crops, and natural resources in more integrated and innovative ways
Ecology and evolution of infectious diseases (EEID): an NSF-led programme with cross-UKRI support to investigate the ecological, evolutionary, organismal, and social drivers that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases through quantitative, mathematical, or computational methods
UK and international research agendas
GloPID-R: a global alliance of research funding organisations enabling knowledge generation to inform policy and practice by decision makers for preparedness and response to infectious disease threats
Global Vaccines Networks: currently funded through the International Science Partnerships Fund and the MRC, five vaccine networks facilitate capacity-building and the development of new vaccines against diseases that have particular impact in low and middle-income countries. The five global vaccine networks are:
- Bacterial Vaccines Network (BactiVac)
- Human Infection Challenge Network (HIC-VAC)
- Immunising pregnant women and infants network (IMPRINT)
- International Veterinary Vaccinology Network (IVVN)
- Vaccine development for complex intracellular neglected pathogens (VALIDATE)
Strategic investments
Proactive Vaccinology Consortia: a £25 million investment (from MRC, BBSRC and UKRI Tackling Infections) on three multi-institutional projects to tackle key questions in virology and immunology that can inform the design of better vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 and other diseases
Flu: TrailMap-One Health: a consortium investment (from MRC, BBSRC and DEFRA) in response to avian influenza virus H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, to investigate the risk to humans and pandemic potential
In addition to supporting research into potential threats, we also respond to disease outbreaks in the UK and internationally. MRC played a major role in the UK research response to COVID-19, standing up a number of significant research investments.
Find out more about MRC’s response to COVID-19.
Antimicrobial resistance
Pathogens naturally evolve resistance mechanisms to drugs, and this can have potentially catastrophic health implications. The importance of preventing and treating resistance in bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, and vectors now has global recognition.
In addition to contributing to AMR research through underpinning research supported by the board, IIB coordinates other relevant research on behalf of MRC.
International and co-funding opportunities
Joint Programming Initiative on AMR: a global collaborative organisation and platform, engaging 29 nations to curb antimicrobial resistance (AMR) with a One Health approach
UK and International research agendas
UK AMR National Action Plan: the UK’s second five-year national action plan setting out ambitions and actions for the next five years in support of the 20-year vision for antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
Global health
Global health is a key MRC strategic aim, and IIB plays an important role in developing and delivering this agenda, particularly on priority global infectious diseases.
In addition to continuing to support research which impacts on the health and wellbeing of populations in resource-poor settings through underpinning research supported by the board, IIB coordinates and supports other relevant investments on behalf of MRC and works closely with other relevant MRC funding programmes, most prominently the Applied Global Health Research Board.
Major MRC investments in this space include:
- MRC Unit, the Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
- MRC and UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit
- MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis
- MRC International Statistics and Epidemiology Group
Major investments
Where concerted action is needed, MRC invests through institutes, units, and MRC Centres of Research Excellence incorporating strong leadership, mission-focused research, training or capacity-building, and applying innovative technology and methodology to tackle major research challenges.
These investments include strategic partnerships with host universities, and a number include joint support with other funders.
Find details of the institutes, units, and centres we fund.