£50 million research collaboration for inflammatory conditions

30 September 2026

A major new UK research centre has been funded to investigate how to restore a healthy immune system and damaged tissues, with the long-term aim of developing treatments that offer lasting, drug-free remission for inflammatory conditions including rheumatoid arthritis.

The Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is investing £50 million over 14 years in a new Centre of Research Excellence for Restorative Immunology. Led by the University of Birmingham, the centre will bring together scientists, doctors and patient research partners from across the UK and Japan.

The research will cover several immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. These include inflammatory arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune liver disease and Sjögren’s disease. Rheumatoid Arthritis is one of the most common forms of inflammatory arthritis. Although these conditions can vary in their impact on a person’s body, they

What could this mean for people with rheumatoid arthritis?

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) happens when the immune system attacks healthy tissue, particularly the lining of the joints. Current treatments can reduce inflammation, ease symptoms and help prevent joint damage but there is no ‘cure’ for RA. The current process for medication is a trial and error style approach, where individuals will try often many different treatments to help reduce inflammation.

The new field of “restorative immunology” aims to go beyond simply suppressing inflammation. Researchers want to understand what keeps inflammation going, how healthy immune balance can be restored and how affected tissues can recover. The ultimate goal is sustained remission without the need for continuous immune-suppressing treatment.

For RA, researchers in Newcastle plan to take forward clinical research on a cell-based therapy designed to switch off the harmful immune response. They will also study blood, immune cells and inflamed tissue to understand how treatment affects the disease.

Patient research partners will work alongside researchers and clinicians. The collaboration also intends to study inflammatory disease across the whole of life, including conditions that begin in childhood like Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis. UCL researchers and NHS partners will help ensure that children, young people and families have a voice in the programme.

More than four million people in the UK are estimated to live with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases with around 500,000 living with RA alone. By sharing knowledge across different conditions and bringing together expertise in immunology, data science and clinical research, the centre hopes to identify common causes of persistent inflammation and turn those discoveries into more precise treatments.

For the RA community, this investment is an encouraging sign of ambition: not only to control symptoms, but to understand and change the processes that drive this disease. NRAS will follow the programme as it develops and share relevant updates with people and families living with RA.