Developmental Pathway Gap Fund (DPGF)
Deadline: 15 November 2023, 4:00pm UK time
Funding: £50,000 – £300,000
Apply for funding to the Developmental Pathway Gap Fund (DPGF), to generate critical preliminary data to build confidence in the development strategy for a new medicine, repurposed medicine, medical device, diagnostic test, or other medical intervention development.
The idea for a new product that can improve human health should have already been conceived and supported by other funding. This should be utilised to produce the critical preliminary data needed to support the onward development of the product. All human diseases and medical interventions are eligible for support, both in the context of UK healthcare and addressing global health issues. Funding Scheme to help prevent disease, improve speed and accuracy of diagnosis of disease, develop new treatments of disease, improve outcome monitoring of patients receiving treatment or improve the management of diseases and conditions. Non-exhaustive list of examples of the types of projects that could be supported include:
- elements of therapeutic discovery, quantification, and validation
- development of an initial prototype
- early prototype testing
- initial biomarker validation
- vector identification or optimisation
- hit expansion medicinal chemistry
Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme
Deadline: 22 November 2023, 4:00pm UK time
Funding: Total fund of £30,000,000
Apply for MRC’s funding to develop and test novel therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and other interventions. You must be based at a UK research organisation (includes NHS bodies) eligible for UKRI funding. 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
Project should focus on at least one of the following stages of development:
- early development and design
- pre-clinical testing
- early-phase clinical studies and trials (up to phase 2a).
There’s no limit on the amount of funding you can apply for, typically fund 80% of the full economic cost. This is an ongoing scheme, application rounds close every March, July and November.
i4i FAST
Deadline: 24 November 2023 , 1:00pm UK time
Funding: Up to £50k per project
FAST is aimed at innovators in need of a small amount of funding to answer a specific question or to fund a single piece of activity to advance healthcare technologies and interventions for increased patient benefit. Awards are designed to address an evidence gap and innovations must have demonstrated experimental proof of concept as a minimum. The i4i FAST programme invites applications to support the development of innovative healthcare technologies applying genomics, pharmacogenomics, phenomics or artificial intelligence for primary care settings (including general practice, community pharmacy, dental and optometry services), to enable earlier or more accurate diagnosis and patient stratification, leading to more effective use of therapies or therapy monitoring.
Funding is available for proposals requesting between £15k and £50k for between 3 to 6 months.
23/94 Interventions to reduce hospital-based medication administration errors
Deadline : 29 November 2023, 1:00pm UK time
Funding : Discretionary
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme is accepting Stage 1 applications to their commissioned workstream for this primary research topic. 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. HTA research is undertaken where some evidence already exists to show that a technology can be effective, and this needs to be compared to the current standard intervention to see which works best. Research can evaluate any intervention used in the treatment, prevention or diagnosis of disease, provided the study outcomes lead to findings that have the potential to be of direct benefit to NHS patients.
“Technologies” in this context mean any method used to promote health, prevent and treat disease, and improve rehabilitation or long-term care. They are not confined to new drugs and include any intervention used in the treatment, prevention or diagnosis of disease. Examples include: procedures, drugs, devices, diagnostic tests, settings of care, screening programmes.
HTA programme will support
- systematic reviews
- economic models
- meta-analyses
- mixed-treatment comparisons
- expected Value of Information studies
- randomised controlled trials (unblinded, single-blinded, double-blinded, triple-blinded)
- non-randomised trials
- single-centre studies where a strong case has been made for this type of design and there is assurance the results will be generalizable to the wider NHS
- cohort studies (retrospective or prospective)
- adaptive designs
- modelling studies
- international studies
i4i Product Development Awards
Deadline: 6 December 2023 (Stage 1)
Funding: No upper limit
i4i Product Development Awards (PDA) fund the development of disruptive early-stage medical technologies that address existing or emerging healthcare needs. They support translational projects developing medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and digital health technologies that are patient-focused and for ultimate NHS use.
- Projects can be led by small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SME), NHS providers or higher education institutions (HEIs).
- Projects must be collaborative between any two of the eligible types of organisation.
- Projects can last a minimum of 24 months and a maximum of 36 months.
- The lead organisation must be registered in England.
BHF translational awards
Deadline : There are two opportunities to submit preliminary or full applications each year. Preliminary application deadlines – 13th December 2023 and 19th June 2024
Total Fund: Up to £750,000
Translational Awards aim to progress the development of novel, innovative technologies towards benefits to human cardiovascular health. The scheme supports the development of technologies with transformative potential from the proof-of-concept stage to being ready for the commercial market.
Proposals are expected to demonstrate a strong intellectual property position and a development proposition that could attract follow-on investment.
- The project should be novel and inventive and address an unmet clinical need within the BHF remit.
- The project should result in a product, technology or intervention that is ready for market development.
- The project should be milestone-driven and have a credible delivery plan.
Who can apply?
- The principal investigator will be a researcher working in an established research institution in the UK.
- Individuals or teams from commercial organisations can apply as collaborators.
Pre-announcement: transdisciplinary funding to tackle antimicrobial resistance
Deadline : 13 December 2023, 4:00pm UK time
Total Fund: £10,000,000
Apply for transdisciplinary funding from AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC,EPSRC,MRC,NERC and UKRI to tackle AMR.
Phase one (£3 million): transdisciplinary networks to connect and expand the UK AMR communities with researchers from a broad range of disciplines with the knowledge and skills to transform our understanding of AMR and deliver innovative and effective solutions by developing and applying a diverse range of methods.
Phase two (£7 million): transdisciplinary research grants to facilitate evidence-based decision making through timely, high impact, and independent research on AMR that meets the needs of policymakers, practitioners, industry, civil and broader society.
Open only to the membership and leadership of the networks established in phase one.
You must be based at a UK research organisation (UK higher education institutions, research council institutes, UKRI-approved independent research organisations, public sector research establishments, NHS bodies with research capacity) eligible for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding.
Knowledge Asset Grant Fund
Deadline : 14 December 2023, 11:00am UK time
Funding: Up to £25,000 per project (Explore Grants), £100,000 per project (Expand Grants) and £250,000 per project (Extend Grants)
The Knowledge Asset Grant Fund (KAGF) is run by the Government Office for Technology Transfer (GOTT) and funded by the Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to support the repurposing, commercialisation or expanded use of public sector knowledge assets. These assets may include intellectual property, data, innovation, software and knowhow. Funding is available in 3 bands – Explore Grants (for projects with costs of up to £25,000), Expand Grants (for projects with costs of between £25,001 and £100,000) and Extend Grants (for projects with costs of between £100,001 and £250,000) with increasing levels of assessment.
To lead a project your organisation must be:
- a UK public sector organisation
- headed by an Accounting Officer responsible for upholding Managing Public Money (MPM)
- the primary beneficiary of any revenue-generating potential created by the funded activities
The previous round of the Knowledge Asset Grant closed on 8 June 2023. From that point onward, organisations in the NHS secondary and tertiary care sector, and publicly owned commercial organisations, will not be eligible to apply for grant funding or other services from the Government Office for Technology Transfer (GOTT).
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund
Deadline: 31 December 2023
Funding: Up to £2m in lending and investment
The British Business Bank has announced the first wave of its £250million Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF), with the launch of £120million of SME debt finance, which is now available to businesses across the 10 Local Enterprise Partnership areas in the Midlands. Aimed at eliminating regional imbalances in funding, the British Business Bank is keen to support fast-growth organisations and businesses looking to expand into new markets and boost productivity, supporting job creation. MEIF is available to support a wide range of businesses at different points in their development, from early-stage businesses seeking small business loans through to businesses wanting to take advantage of their growth potential through equity investments.
Heart Research UK’s Novel and Emerging Technologies Grants
Deadline: Outline applications accepted: 1st September 2023 – 2nd October 2023; Deadline full applications: 12th January 2024
Funding: Maximum award of £300,000
This unique grant gives researchers the opportunity to apply for funding to develop a novel and emerging technology or a new application of an existing technology. NET grants are research projects which focus on the development of new and innovative technologies to diagnose, treat and prevent heart disease and related conditions. Research projects with the emphasis on (1) novel and emerging technologies and (2) their application into cardiovascular disease prevention and/or treatment, which can be expected to benefit patients within a foreseeable timeframe, will be considered. Appropriate approaches include tissue and bioengineering, the development and evaluation of new diagnostic devices, bio imaging, nanotechnology, biomaterials, genomic, and proteomic approaches, computational biology and bioinformatics. Funding clinical trials through the NET Grant scheme is not appropriate. However, research projects incorporating a small scale clinical study to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology will be considered, providing that the clinical study is not the main focus of the research programme.
Tackling obesity
Deadline: Open – no closing date
Funding: Not specified
Apply for funding to develop effective strategies to tackle overweight and obesity. ‘Tackling obesity’ is open to applications submitted to the Population and Systems Medicine Board.
Before applying for funding, check the following:
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has introduced new role types for funding opportunities being run on the new UKRI Funding Service from 22 May 2023. For full details, see eligibility as an individual. There is no limit to the funding you can apply for, but it should be appropriate to the research project. We will usually fund up to 80% of your project’s full economic cost. This is an ongoing funding priority for the Population and Systems Medicine Board. Application rounds close every January, May and September.
Research remit: MRC is seeking multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary applications to tackle overweight and obesity. The research should support evidence-based approaches to improve health in real-life settings. In particular, to better understand what makes an effective intervention. We aim to do this by encouraging greater integration and synergy across existing pockets of expertise in the biological, behavioural, psychological, environmental and social sciences. Applications should be innovative, cross-disciplinary and collaborative, and include partnerships between basic, clinical and social scientists, and with other stakeholders.
Applications should provide robust evidence to improve public health in real-life settings by providing a holistic understanding of the important factors influencing obesity and developing effective strategies (individual, societal, or both) to tackle overweight and obesity.
Applications should aim to:
- provide new insights on obesity by combining and building on:
- existing resources (for example, cohorts, epidemiological studies, clinical trials, intervention studies, NHS and other data)
- strengths in data linkage expertise
- achieve greater understanding of the dynamic systems which lead to obesity by:
- enhancing and merging data resources from different domains
- engaging with a range of relevant stakeholders (for example, local authorities; councils; the public; a broad set of relevant industries such as pharma, food and retail industries, new technologies, artificial intelligence and social media)
Creative England Investments
Deadline: None specified
Funding: £100,000 – £1m
Creative Growth Finance is providing vital scale up finance to a portfolio comprising some of the UK’s most promising creative businesses. Finance will be directed to post-revenue creative businesses presenting promising growth potential and who:
– bring change, disruption and new IP to the creative industries
– harness creativity with technologies and supporting businesses
– are talent led
Partnership
- Loans of £100,000 – £1m across all UK regions
- Long-term specialist support
- Access to investment and creative networks
- Access to support programmes
Researching motor neurone disease
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Discretionary
Through this highlight notice, applicants are invited to submit innovative research proposals to MRC that aim to:
- improve the mechanistic understanding of MND, including identification and validation of new biomarkers
- investigate potential new therapeutic avenues
Apply for funding to research motor neurone disease (MND). You can get funding through any:
- grants from MRC research boards or panels
- MRC fellowships
You should apply through the existing funding opportunity that is most relevant to your science area and career stage.
Global Innovation Fund
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Discretionary
The Global Innovation Fund is a non-profit innovation fund headquartered in London with an office in Washington D.C. that invests in the development, rigorous testing, and scaling of innovations targeted at improving the lives of the world’s poorest people. Through our grants and risk capital, we help breakthrough solutions to global development challenges from for profit firms, non profit organisations, researchers, and government agencies to maximise their impact and affect meaningful change.
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. They have a number of themed calls, please refer their website for more information.
NIHR: Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Discretionary
The EME Programme primarily supports clinical trials, and other robustly designed studies that test the efficacy of interventions. The interventions should have the potential to improve patient care or benefit the public. The programme will only support studies where there is sufficient evidence that the intervention might work in man, i.e. that there is ‘proof of concept’. Current calls here include Cystic Fibrosis, Novel strategies to reduce overtreatment, Paediatric Care among others.
Horizon Europe
Deadline: None specified
Funding: €95.5 billion
Horizon Europe is an EU research and innovation programme. It has a budget of €95.5 billion and runs until 2027. If you’re a UK-based researcher or innovator, you can apply to most Horizon Europe funding opportunities on the same terms as EU-based applicants. Horizon Europe funding is available for excellent research in any field, researcher mobility, research infrastructure, global challenges and industrial competitiveness (health; culture, creativity and inclusive society; civil security for society; digital, industry and space; climate, energy and mobility; food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and environment), innovation, development of the European research and innovation systems. Details about the Horizon Europe programme structure can be found here.
Nesta Impact Investment
Deadline: None specified
Funding: £1,000,000
Nesta Impact Investments is a £17.6m fund investing in life changing innovations that help tackle the major challenges faced by older people, children and communities in the UK.
New Horizons Grants – Cardiovascular research
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Up to £300,000 per project
Funding from BHF to encourage scientists from outside traditional cardiovascular biology to engage in cardiovascular research and bring novel expertise to the field to develop new technologies, models or methodologies and explore novel concepts. The principal investigator will be a senior researcher working in an established research institution in the UK. Early-stage concept development and testing, which may later lead to translational research, is appropriate for the New Horizons scheme. The proposed research plan should contain elements of developing novel technologies, models, applications or methodologies utilising the multidisciplinary background of the applicants.
Digital Health.London’s Accelerator programme
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Discretionary
DigitalHealth.London’s Accelerator programme aims to speed up the adoption of technology in London’s NHS, relieving high pressure on services and empowering patients to manage their health.
Companies successful in gaining a place on the programme usually have a product or service that has already been piloted in the NHS and is ready to scale.
Innovate UK Scale Up programme
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Not specified
Innovate UK EDGE’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 EDGE is a key enabler of this strategic priority and through the Scaleup Programme, helps the highest potential businesses realise their ambitions.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF)
Deadline: None specified
Funding: Not available
BHF provide personal support for clinical and non-clinical cardiovascular researchers at all stages of their career. They also provide grants for short and long term research projects, essential infrastructure and strategic initiatives.
