Action Medical Research

Action Medical Research

Action Medical Research was established in 1952 by Duncan Guthrie, initially as the National Fund for Poliomyelitis Research, specifically to fund the development of a UK polio vaccine. The charity successfully funded the first British trials of the oral polio vaccine, effectively eliminating the disease from the UK. Following that mission's completion, the organization broadened its mandate to become a leading national funder of medical research into conditions affecting babies, children, and young people. Julie Buckler serves as CEO, with Luke Bordewich chairing a board of trustees that includes Bhavin Shah, a partner at Apollo Management International, and Richard Stoneham-Buck, a senior Google executive. The charity's deployment strategy revolves around awarding project grants to universities and hospitals across the United Kingdom. Its funding focus is specifically child health, covering areas such as rare diseases, prematurity, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy. Unlike broad biomedical funders, Action Medical Research targets conditions that disproportionately affect children but are often neglected by larger pharmaceutical research because of small patient populations. The organization also networks with other charities to amplify its impact, partnering with LifeArc to co-fund translational research into children's rare diseases, creating a bridge between laboratory discovery and clinical application. Governance of the endowment sits with the board of trustees, including Honorary Treasurer Richard Wild, who is Group Head of Anti-Financial Crimes Compliance for UniCredit. While the charity does not publicly disclose a total AUM figure, Altss estimates a modest endowment portfolio in the range of ~£13 million ($17 million). The organization maintains a secondary office in London's Great Portland Street, supplementing its Horsham headquarters. The foundation is a founding member of the Association of Medical Research Charities, a mark of its long-standing adherence to rigorous peer-review standards in scientific grant-making. A genuine structural differentiator is the organization's identity as a single-disease-conquering origin charity that successfully transitioned to a broad pediatric research mandate. Few foundations can claim to have directly funded the eradication of a disease from a nation, then repositioned for the next generation of child-health challenges. The board's inclusion of a contemporary private-equity executive from Apollo alongside a technology operations leader from Google further marries vintage charitable governance with modern institutional asset-management and operational thinking—an unusual blend for a foundation of this modest scale.