British Heart Foundation: Clinical Study Grants
Deadline: Not specified
Funding: £500,000
The Clinical Study Grant supports funding for over £500,000 for:
Interventional clinical trials: trials of specific interventions or pathways of care for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Interventions include drugs, surgery, devices, psychological, physical and educational interventions.
Observational studies of specific patient groups that are hypothesis led and address a defined clinical question(s) over a fixed timescale (up to 5 years).
The population of interest should be a patient population, who will usually be recruited within the NHS.
British Heart Foundation: Infrastructure Grants
Deadline: Not specified
Funding: £1m
These awards are accessible to senior cardiovascular scientists and are intended to support the work of multiple groups and research activities at institutions that demonstrate a strong commitment to cardiovascular research.
British Heart Foundation: Programme Grants
Deadline: Not specified
Funding: None specified
Programme grants provide larger, longer term (up to five years) and renewable funding to leading research groups to address significant research challenges. They are intended to support researchers to undertake a variety of activities focusing on one strategic research theme.
CRUK: Early Detection and Diagnosis Project Award
Deadline: 3rd December 2026
Funding: up to £500k
This award funds exceptional science to drive transformational change in how and when early cancers and pre-cancerous states are detected and diagnosed.
CRUK: Early Detection and Diagnosis Programme Award
Deadline: 21st January 2027
Funding: up to £2.5M
This award funds long-term, integrated and potentially renewable programmes of exceptional science to drive forward a transformational change in how early cancers and pre-cancerous states are detected.
CRUK: Clinical Research Funding Scheme
Deadline: 3rd December 2026
Funding: Flexible, module dependent
This modular funding scheme provides funding for high-quality clinical research, associated translational research, and collection of samples and data. This module supports interventional cancer treatment trials, including systemic treatment, radiotherapy, and surgery, with the aim of improving patient outcomes. We expect proposals, where possible, to have experimental medicine modules and sample collection modules integrated within the trial.
Themes include biomarker research, cancer aetiology, cancer biology, clinical trials, data and computation-driven approaches, imaging research, immunology, immunotherapy, pre-clinical research, radiotherapy research, statistics and methodology and surgery research.
SBRI Healthcare – NHS Cancer Programme – Open Call 4
Deadline: 1st December 2026
Funding: Real‑World Implementation and Evaluation Fund – up to £3M; Innovation Spread Fund – up to £5M
Innovation Open Call 4 is looking for innovations that address two challenges:
- Improving productivity through managing demand or improving capacity on cancer care pathways – to support the NHS in meeting all Cancer Waiting Time standards by March 2029; and/or
- Driving the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer (through novel screening, prompt presentation, case-finding, or diagnostic tools) – to help ensure three quarters of people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free, or living well with cancer after 5 years, by 2035.
Innovate UK Scale Up programme
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Not specified
Innovate UK Business Growth’s highly regarded Scaleup Programme provides oneto-one, bespoke and fully funded support centered around innovative scaleups’ specific needs. It is available to those companies achieving, or with the potential for, 50% compound annual growth rates (CAGR) and over.
The Scaleup Programme helps the highest potential businesses realise their ambitions. Delivering growth at scale is at the heart of Innovate UK’s emerging strategy for business innovation in the UK. Innovate UK is a key enabler of this strategic priority and through the Scaleup Programme, helps the highest potential businesses realise their ambitions.
Innovate UK: Advancing Innovation in Accelerated Cancer Diagnosis
Deadline: 28th October 2026
Funding: Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £1.5 million and £4 million.
The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development of diagnostic innovations that enable the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer, particularly less common cancers.
Your project must focus on developing, validating or evaluating diagnostic technologies or approaches that demonstrate clear potential for clinical and health economic impact. Projects can generate robust evidence to support regulatory approval and future NHS adoption.
Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
- Next generation diagnostic technologies and devices: to drive earlier diagnosis of cancer, including less common cancers
- Novel technologies and devices which can improve patient access to diagnostic services,
- Harnessing multi-modal approaches: to assess an individual’s cancer risk by considering multiple factors including genomic, demographic, imaging and biomarkers, as well as multianalyte combinations.
This list is not intended to be exhaustive.
NIHR: Health Technology Assessment
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Discretionary
The Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme funds research about the clinical and cost-effectiveness and broader impact of healthcare treatments and tests for those who plan, provide or receive care from NHS and social care services. NIHR have a number of calls in the HTA category, please refer their website for more information.
NIHR Themed funding opportunities
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Discretionary
Themed opportunities typically cover all aspects of translational, clinical, public health and social care research. Funded research projects vary depending on the theme, but their ultimate aim is to improve health, public health and social care all over the UK.
Our current themed funding include:
- shaping and supporting the health, public health and social care workforce of the future
- lobular breast cancer
- strategies and interventions for deprescribing
- brain tumours
Scottish Enterprise – SMART: SCOTLAND grants
Deadline: A new fund will be launched in late Autumn 2026
Funding: Up to £100K
The SMART: SCOTLAND grant is one of our research and development (R&D) grants that aims to support high-risk, highly ambitious projects.
It provides support to conduct feasibility studies. It’s only available to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) based in Scotland, and supports activities that have a commercial endpoint. The grants support feasibility studies that help to show how ideas could work in the real world. The SMART grant aims to support our priority areas for economic transformation, including Life sciences (human health)
UKRI Translation: MRC Proof of Concept
Deadline: 18th November 2026
Funding: No limit but should be appropriate to the project
Apply for funding to develop and test novel therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and other interventions across any stage of the developmental pathway, from prototype development, through pre-clinical refinement, to early-phase clinical studies (up to phase 2a).
You can apply for academically-led translational projects that aim to either:
- improve prevention, diagnosis, prognosis or treatment of significant health needs
- develop research tools that increase the efficiency of developing interventions
All human diseases and medical interventions are eligible for support, both in the context of UK healthcare and addressing global health issues.
To be eligible to apply for this funding you must be employed by an eligible UK based research organisation.
UKRI Translation: MRC Impact Acceleration Awards
Deadline: 11th November 2026
Funding: £50k-£300k
The Impact Acceleration Award supports strategic priorities including:
- precision prevention to reduce disease risk in targeted populations
- early and accurate diagnosis to improve speed and accuracy of disease detection
- advanced treatments offering novel therapeutic approaches
- improve outcome monitoring of patients receiving treatment
- better management of diseases and conditions through innovative technologies.
Developing a new or repurposed medicine, medical device, diagnostic, or other medical product. Projects must target a high-risk development step backed by prior funding, generating critical data to de-risk onward progression or determine failure.
To be eligible to apply for this funding you must be based at a Medical Research Council (MRC) eligible research organisation.
