Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to support innovation in epilepsy research.

UK Research and Innovation’s Medical Research Council spends around £3 million each year on epilepsy research, spanning discovery science and fundamental understanding of the disease through to new approaches for diagnosis and intervention. Such as £2.64 million to University College London for A Network Approach to Gene Therapy for Refractory Epilepsies.

Between April 2019 and March 2024 Innovate UK has awarded a total of £8.38 million of grant funding to 25 projects relating to epilepsy.

In addition, the 2023/24 Early Career Researchers fund allocated over £1.6 million of funding towards epilepsy research, mainly through the Epilepsy Institute to advance research into the causes, prevention and treatment of epilepsy and its associated conditions.