A £775 million ($1.3 billion) funding boost for National Health Service (NHS)–university partnerships to pursue translational research was announced in March. The UK's National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) will make the largest ever translational research—over five years. The grant scheme builds on the recently unveiled Model Industry Collaborative Research Agreement (MICRA) to broker research collaborations among universities, industry and the NHS. MICRA aims to help industry by identifying suitable clinicians and researchers for collaborations, as well as streamlining the negotiation and contracting process and ensuring that intellectual property can be assigned flexibly. Rob Winder of the BioIndustry Association in London said that even though biotech won't get funded directly by this scheme, it should lubricate their association with academia, help clinical trials start more quickly and otherwise speed up innovation. Industry is “very keen” on the new scheme, he added. According to Sally Davies, the UK's Chief Medical Officer and Director General of R&D at the Department of Health, the NIHR's researchers will play a key role in partnering with biotech companies. They already have a track record of liaising successfully with biotech in the fields of liver disease, regenerative medicine and DNA vaccines. The funding will prioritize cancer, heart disease and dementia.