Crossed Grain

March 2023 Issue 120 Your charity newsletter Last spring, we reached out to you to ask for donations to support research activities, as part of our Journey to a Cure campaign. Thanks to your amazing generosity, we achieved our funding target and we welcomed submissions from the research community in the autumn. We recognise the importance of the donations we are entrusted with, and we know how important it is for this money to be spent wisely. Our Research Awards Panel led an extensive and extremely rigorous selection process. This was based on expert peer reviewers’ reports and the views of our member review panel, people with coeliac disease, their carers and family members. Without your support, we wouldn’t have been able to fund a fantastic project aimed at moving us further along that road – thank you. The project which has been chosen comes from the leading scientific experts based at Oxford and Cambridge universities, who are working together on Understanding the immune system’s role in coeliac disease through spatial analyses . The expert researchers will be looking at individual cells and how they change and interact when coeliac disease is found. By unearthing the answers to these questions, it will help to increase our understanding of the immunological jigsaw for coeliac disease. This understanding is currently unknown but could pave the way to identify new treatments or by finding the triggers for coeliac disease, could prevent it from starting. This knowledge could also improve strategies to manage severe disease. Funding for the next step on our Journey to a Cure It is a truly exciting prospect, but we cannot issue a call for more submissions until we have enough money in our Research Fund. That is why we are appealing to our community for your support again. Could you help the Research Fund and give a donation that will give us the ability to greenlight one, two or perhaps even more new research projects? Every project is different, meaning costs will vary. For example, £250,000 was the amount needed to fund this latest research project. Every penny we receive from kind supporters like you, moves us closer to finally stopping or preventing the daily burden that those with coeliac disease face. www.coeliac.org.uk/rf-donate or by calling us on 0333 332 2033 The project will start later this year and will take around 3 years to complete. Hilary Croft, Coeliac UK CEO commented: “This crucial research project will be one of hopefully many similarly exciting projects that our Research Fund will be able to support – as we build up speed on the journey to put an end to coeliac disease.” Hilary Croft, Coeliac UK CEO You can donate to the Coeliac UK Research Fund by visiting