UKDI Biosecurity Frontiers: Defending against biological threats

UKDI submissions are welcome from the private sector, academia and Public Sector Research Establishments (PSRE’s).

Proposals must address at least one of the challenges and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 6 for Challenge 1 and 3, and a maximum of TRL 7 for Challenge 2. Innovations must progress through at least one TRL during the project, with a maximum project length of 12 months.

UKDI expect to fund 5 to 7 proposals across the 3 challenges, in the region of £100,000 to £500,000 each.

The government is seeking to bolster biosurveillance capabilities to detect and monitor traditional and novel threats that are naturally derived or manmade. Capabilities include:

• Sensitive or low-latency detection of novel outbreaks within communities or particular locations, including technologies deployable outside of the laboratory and potentially in harsh environments.
• Technologies which monitor outbreaks as well as initially detect them.
• Bioforensics and attribution technologies which allow us to understand the characteristics or origin of a threat are also of interest.

Ideas that could help solve this challenge area include (but would not be limited to):

• New environmental surveillance technologies, focused on building capability in the use of portable in-field surveillance technologies and to support the interpretation of complex surveillance data.
• Computational tools, capable of analysing large data sets (i.e. relevant omic data sets) that could aid the identification of notifiable pathogens, emerging pathogens, synthetically derived pathogens and/or genetic anomalies within these complex data sets.
• Computational tools that enable expedient analysis (and fusion) of disparate and large / complex data sets; for example, approaches to interrogate microbial sequencing data, data from non-genomic outputs / sample metadata.
• Producing cutting-edge sequencing technology as well as work on DNA air sequencing and early-stage work to find future sequencing techniques.
• Permanently installed air surveillance systems at high-footfall, private and publicly accessible locations that detect, identify, monitor and quantify biological agents, in the aerosol phase.

Proposals must address at least one of the challenges and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 6, progressing through at least one TRL during the project, with a maximum project length of 12 months.

The government is seeking industry support in harnessing AI to support the identification and development of new diagnostic, therapeutic and vaccine (DTV) candidates. This would likely focus on priority pathogens identified by the UK Health Security Agency and novel biological threats, and the use of predictive AI for structure-based diagnostics and DTV discovery and development.

Ideas that could help solve this challenge area include (but would not be limited to):

• Solutions that reduce diagnostic uncertainty, for example enhanced assays for PCR testing, to include earlier indication of which strains of infection are more likely to become resistant.
• Capabilities to support both the discovery and development of DTVs at pace in response to threats e.g. new tools to produce molecules at speed or at scale, helping to convert AI designs into products that can be tested and used.
• The development of innovative modes of administration to support vaccine and therapeutic accessibility
• Embedding AI into the end-to-end pipeline for vaccine and therapeutic development to support accelerated development timelines.
• R&D related to storage and deployment, such as, extending shelf life or improving stability under different conditions. Ways to detect and attribute man-made AI biological sequences developed from using AI models.

Proposals must address at least one of the challenges and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 7, progressing through at least one TRL during the project, with a maximum project length of 12 months.

The government is looking to diversify and strengthen the supply chains of personal protective equipment (PPE). To address this, proposals could include:

• Ways to increase efficiency and manufacture lower-cost PPE
• Development of universal Respiratory Protective Equipment, seeking adaptations to masks that improve their fit test pass rate. This could be replicated and expanded into a wider cohort.
• Innovative PPE decontamination and disinfection without compromising the material integrity.
• Utilise biodegradable alternatives to polypropylene for PPE production and confirm viability in manufacturing processes.
• Solutions which remove humans from operations in a contaminated area.

Proposals must address at least one of the challenges and move technologies through Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). Innovations must progress up to a minimum of TRL 4 and a maximum of TRL 6, progressing through at least one TRL during the project, with a maximum project length of 12 months.

For all challenges, UKDI are interested in concepts, products or solutions that benefit end-users working in UK defence and security. Your proposal should include evidence of:

• How it addresses the critical capability gap in the UK Biological Security sector
• How it will support the UK industrial sector and strengthen and secure domestic supply chains.
• How it will consider future advancements and remain adaptable to a changing risk picture.
• The potential for your innovation to be translated into a practical demonstration in the future.
• Innovation or a creative approach.
• How the proposed work applies in specific One Health, Defence and/or Security contexts.
• For innovations that are bioinformatic tools or software developments, it is desirable but not essential, to meet the following requirements:
  • have a modular structure, with clearly defined inputs and outputs
  • have a clear specification, validation datasets and documentation to be approved by the technical partner
  • be open-source
  • be developed in a mainstream programming language to be approved by the technical partner
  • can be easily integrated into analysis pipelines running on Linux-based operating systems,
  • be command-line executed, and written in a widely used programming language such as Python or C

UKDI encourage collaboration between innovators for this competition. To support this, they have a short survey to collect details of those who wish to explore collaboration possibilities. If you are interested, please complete the collaboration survey.

1-2-1 teleconference sessions to ask specific technical questions to the competition team will be available on Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 April. Booking for these will be open from 17 April – please see the full competition document for links.

If you are unsure whether your idea is in scope, UKDI strongly recommend that you contact your local UKDI Innovation Partner via the Contact UKDI form. They will explore the suitability of your innovation for the competition