The Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) and UK Medical Research Council (MRC) aim to develop and strengthen science and innovation partnership between Philippine and UK institutions through the Newton Fund research grants as part of the Official Development Assistance (ODA) of the UK Government.

Six (6) research collaborations on surveillance, diagnostics, and characterization of infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV, schistosomiasis, dengue, antimicrobial resistance, and tuberculosis were awarded Php 260M in grants.

UK-Philippine collaboration is an excellent opportunity to address some of the key challenges for health in the Philippines especially in the field of infectious disease. The three-year projects are co-funded by PCHRD and MRC and will be implemented together by Philippine and UK institutions.

“This collaboration will help us in improving health outcomes through research-based solutions and innovations, and working with the best institutions in UK will complement our current research efforts in infectious disease research,” said Dr. Jaime C. Montoya, Executive Director, PCHRD.

“It is fantastic that we have been able to work together with PCHRD to fund six projects across a range of extremely important Infectious Disease research areas. Through working in partnership, UK and Filipino researchers will be able to explore these research questions using shared expertise of the diseases and Filipino context” said by Dr Mark Palmer, Director of International Strategy, MRC

The six projects, from the 22 proposals submitted during the Newton Fund Research Call, were selected during the UK – Philippine joint panel meeting held on 4-6 November 2015 in Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, London, United Kingdom. The call focused on researches relevant to Filipinos, which includes understanding the cause of disease or epidemiology in the Filipino population, or development or implementation of interventions for resource-poor communities in the Philippines.

The following six projects will be undertaken by Philippine and UK institutions:

1.  ENSURE: Enhanced surveillance for control and elimination of malaria in the Philippines (Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine);
2. See and Sequence’ – Genomic surveillance of antimicrobial resistant and high-risk pathogenic clones within the Philippines (Research Institute for Tropical Medicine and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute);
3. Triple-D Targets: The UK-Philippines Dengue Diagnostic and Drug Targets Research Consortium (National Institutes of Health, University of the Philippines Manila and University of Bristol);
4. HIV G.E.T (Gaming, Engaging and Testing) Project (University of the Philippines Manila and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine);
5. Impact assessment of diagnostic tools for multi-drug resistant and (MDR-TB) drug sensitive tuberculosis (TB) in the Philippines (De la Salle Health Sciences Institute and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine)
6. Structure Elucidation and Characterization of the Venus Kinase Receptors of a Philippine Isolate of Schistosoma japonicum (University of the Philippines Diliman and Imperial College London)