Over the last few months we have announced several exciting new research projects investigating different aspects of ME/CFS, with several more still to come this year.
All of these projects were funded by our supporters following our annual call for grant applications, and last week we announced our new call for 2023. So a new batch of applications will be arriving over the next few weeks.
We know that the direction and integrity of new ME/CFS research is very important to our supporters, so we thought we would share some of the principles we look to when assessing new applications for research funding.
- We only fund at recognised research institutions, principally universities.
- All grant applications are assessed by our dedicated Science Committee as well as external, expert peer-reviewers.
- We require that applicants demonstrate how their proposed research is likely to benefit people with ME/CFS in the short-to-medium term.
- We require that researchers clearly justify how they identify participants with ME/CFS, including the diagnostic criteria used, and recognising that post-exertional malaise is a cardinal feature of the disease.
- We will only fund long COVID research if it is part of a larger project that has ME/CFS as its main focus.
- We do not fund research which involves the use of animals.
- We encourage patient involvement in the design and implementation of research projects, where this is possible and appropriate.
- We also encourage researchers to consider patient subgroups, such as by sex or disease severity.
