Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding for research into methods for (a) treating and (b) curing Trimethylaminuria.

The Government supports research into common and rare diseases through the Department funded National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in England. In 2017/18 the NIHR funded one research study into the trimethylaminuria disease which took place at the NIHR Guy’s and St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Centre and NIHR Guy’s and St Thomas’ Clinical Research Facility. The study investigated the feasibility of a novel assessment tool to measure the treatment efficacy in patients suffering from Trimethylaminuria. The study ran for nine months and finished in February 2018.

The Government also supports research into rare diseases through the Medical Research Council (MRC), funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. An MRC award of £361,000 from 2013 to 2016 supported researchers at University College London in testing a new therapy to be used for the treatment of trimethylaminuria. Further information on the project, including publications outlining the results can be found at the following link:

https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FK015494%2F1

Rare diseases patients also benefit from the pioneering research under the 100,000 Genomes Project. As of October 2018, over 3,000 researchers in 387 United Kingdom and international institutions were part of Genomics England’s Clinical Interpretation Partnership, which have been set up to improve understanding of genomic medicine and its application to healthcare; improve understanding of diseases; and lead the way to developing new diagnostics and treatments.