REA4 award recipients

Details of small grants that have been awarded in REA4

REA4 Translational Research Awards

The REA4 Translational Research Awards provide seed funding to encourage the translation of fundamental research across the REA4 themes into innovative technologies and solutions that have the potential to deliver patient benefit. There are two funding streams:

  • Generator Fund – up to £10k of funding for projects with a duration of 3 to 12 months.

    Supports early-stage activity to test new ideas, kickstart prototyping, or assess the feasibility of an approach. Outcomes include delivery of initial proof of concept or feasibility to de-risk the proposal for follow-on translational funding or engagement.

  • Springboard Fund – up to £30k of funding for projects with a duration of 6 to 12 months.

    Supports iterative development, prototyping, and validation of innovation solutions or approaches where proof of concept has been established or is supported by preliminary data. Outcomes include creating new know-how or intellectual property and de-risking projects for substantial follow-on translational funding and/or external collaboration and engagement.

Round 2 – awarded May 2026

AwardeeProject titleAmount awarded
Michael Chen; co-applicants Andy Baker, Simon BrownEngineering vascular-targeted lipid nanoparticles for translational RNA therapy in heart bypass graft failure£29,540
Dimitrios Doudesis; co-applicants Takeshi Fujisawa, Paul Fineran, Kuan Ken Lee, Nick MillsDevelopment and validation of the CoDE-ACS decision-support tool for the Siemens high-sensitivity troponin assay to enable multi-platform clinical implementation£29,716
Kestutis Maciunas; co-applicants Vinush Vigneswaran, Steven WilliamsOpenEP Interoperability Pack: TRE-ready electrophysiology data packaging, quality control, and provenance for reproducible atrial and ventricular mapping data analysis£28,332
Matthew NolanEvaluation of label-free high spatial and temporal resolution cerebrovascular imaging£26,661

Round 1 – awarded June 2025

AwardeeProject titleAmount awarded
Simon Brown; co-applicants Andy Baker, Julie Rodor, Abdelaziz BeqqaliDeveloping viral-based RNA therapeutics expressing anti-proliferative miRNA for the prevention of coronary artery bypass graft failure£30,000
Ian Holland; co-applicants Chris McCormick, Sneha RaviHuman vascular tissue models for high-throughput development of patient therapeutics£29,835
Sarah McGlasson; co-applicants David Hunt, Anna KlingseisenA nucleic acid-based approach to target the toxic allele in a monogenic small vessel disease£30,000

 

REA4 Pump Priming Awards

The REA4 Pump Priming Awards are small grants intended to directly aid successful grant and fellowship applications, initiate new collaborations, or establish new research directions that will be fundable from other sources within the period of the REA4 award. The first call for projects was specifically for proposals from postdocs and early career principal investigators (within five years of their first position as principal investigators). This round was completed in March 2025, with the following awards made.

AwardeeProject titleAmount awarded
Jess Ivy; co-applicant Mahesh KarnaniUnderstanding the neuroscience of enhanced salt-appetite in kidney injury£27,746.75
Mark AdamsMulti-ancestry finemapping of gene clusters implicated in cardiovascular disease and mental health£3,500
Shruti JoshiMyocardial fibroblast activation and thrombosis in takotsubo syndrome£34,400
James LoanSTudy of modifiable Inflammatory determinants of Resilience after IntraCerebral Haemorrhage (STIR-ICH)£47,718.49
Marie de BakkerA scalable federated approach to evaluate time trends and inequalities in the provision of primary prevention therapies for individuals at high risk of cardiovascular disease£19,303
Tim WilkinsonCerebrovascular reactivity as a biomarker of drug response in vascular cognitive impairment: a feasibility study£13,850
Peter GallacherCardiovascular outcomes after non-cardiac surgery: the influence of chronic kidney disease£29,995.05
Ignacio Fernando Hall BalcazarHigh-content screening of FDA-approved drugs to identify and triage novel treatment options in atherosclerosis disease£31,448
Laura WagstaffUnravelling the role of Schwann cell senescence in diabetic peripheral neuropathy£19,918.70
Mark MacmillanMyocardial and cerebral blood flow with oxygen-15 water total body positron emission tomography and photon counting computed tomography£23,830
Giovanni Levate; co-applicants Adriana Tavares, Christophe Lucatelli11C-Acetate PET/CT to quantify glucocorticoid regulation of oxidative phosphorylation in cardiometabolic tissues in mice£22,204.25
Kahyee HorNovel imaging approaches to explore links between umbilical cord structure, haemodynamics, and fetal programming of adult cardiometabolic disease – an exploratory study£39,058.17
Dimitrios Doudesis; co-applicant Kuan Ken LeeDeep learning to improve the diagnosis of myocardial infarction£18,583
Steven WilliamsImaging atrial fibrosis and scar using photon counting CT£25,544
Selma Gulyurtlu; co-applicants Andy Baker, Abdelaziz Beqqali, Alessio CiulliAssessing the therapeutic potential of targeted protein degradation in cardiac fibrosis£25,781.50
Aarushi Singhal, Tariq RamtoolaIntegrating advanced cardiovascular imaging techniques with omics technologies to explore mechanistic pathways driving the progression of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction£29,258
Panna TandonAutomated CRISPR screening in zebrafish to uncover glia–neuron crosstalk regulating energy homeostasis and cardiovascular disease risk£39,568.38
Ryszard NosalskiIL15/IL15RA signalling in cardiac dysfunction and inflammation post-myocardial infarction£29,795
Mark MacAskill; co-applicant Cass LiElucidating the mechanism of direct parasympathetic regulation of fibroblast collagen deposition via the alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor£25,550.45
Lizzie Haythorne, David DuneauHow do endocrine disrupting chemicals from plastic pollution impact glucose metabolism of insulin secreting cells?£35,071.41
Josselin NespouxInvestigating LRG1 as a biomarker of cardiovascular disease risk in kidney transplant recipients£14,838

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