Contracts for Innovation: Engineering Biology for Defra and Food Standards Agency, phase 1

To lead a project, you must:

• be a UK based organisation of any size
• work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)

Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. The majority of the project work and key deliverables must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK, and most of the funding spent within the UK. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.

Projects must:

• start on 1 January 2027
• end by 30 September 2027
• last up to 9 months
• have total costs of no more than £200,000, inclusive of VAT

The majority of the project work and key deliverables must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK, and most of the funding spent within the UK.

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service. This lets you incorporate the results of your exploration and design and demonstrate that you can produce in quantity to acceptable quality standards.

The aim of the competition is to enable innovative engineering biology focused organisations to accelerate the development and commercialisation of products that can address the societal challenges defined by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Food Standards Agency (FSA):

• low cost, real time water quality monitoring for policy, public health, and ecosystem management using genomic monitoring and surveillance
• accelerating next generation veterinary vaccine platforms through engineering biology
• predicting ecosystem health and resilience from eDNA through AI driven functional genomics
• rapid diagnostics to maintain food standards and regulatory compliance

You must demonstrate a credible and practical route to market, so your application must include a plan to commercialise your results.

You must define your goals in your application and outline your plan for phase 1.

At this stage contracts will only be given for phase 1. At the end of Phase 1 the applicant will demonstrate the technical and commercial feasibility of the innovation. In phase 2 we will ask successful applicants from phase 1 to continue the development of their solution.

The primary innovation and competitive advantage underpinning the project must arise from, or enable, engineering biology. For the purposes of this competitions engineering biology is defined as the purposeful engineering of biological systems. These will create new or enhanced functions that do not occur naturally, or that cannot be achieved efficiently through conventional approaches. This includes the design, modification or creation of organisms, cells, genetic circuits, enzymes, proteins or other biomolecular systems that exhibit novel or enhanced functionality.

Your solution can focus on one or more of the following technologies in which the core innovation is in engineered biological systems, for example, built on synthetic biology techniques:

• Biosensors and Diagnostic
• Biomanufacturing Systems
• Biocatalysis and Chemical Production
• Engineered Biomaterials
• Metabolic Engineering
• Nucleotide Synthesis
• Engineered Proteins and Enzymes
• Cell And Microbe Engineering
• Synthetic Biology Platforms
• Gene Editing and Genome Engineering
• AI and Computational Biology

Elements of project work that predominately focus on the viability or the scale up of the technology, such as validation, manufacturing or regulatory progression as appropriate, will be supported through this competition.

This is providing that they are directly enabled by, and derive value from, the underlying engineering biology innovation.

Evidence to support the project’s primary innovation being based on engineering biology will be required as part of the application, and may include:

• patents
• proprietary strains
• engineered cell lines
• protected know-how
• software enabled biological design capabilities
• licences to relevant background IP
• other demonstrable ownership or control of engineering biology intellectual assets

Your project must focus on only one of the following:

• low cost, real time water quality monitoring for policy, public health, and ecosystem management using genomic monitoring and surveillance
• accelerating next generation veterinary vaccine platforms through engineering biology
• predicting ecosystem health and resilience from eDNA through AI driven functional genomics
• rapid diagnostics to maintain food standards and regulatory compliance

Low Cost, Real Time Water Quality Monitoring for Policy, Public Health, and Ecosystem Management using Genomic Monitoring and Surveillance

In scope:

• portable, autonomous systems that enable continuous, real-time monitoring of pollutants and pathogens in rivers, lakes, and bathing waters to enable rapid responses to pollution events, biodiversity threats and biosecurity risks
• combine advanced sensing technologies, biosensors, eDNA, CRISPR based diagnostics, with AI driven analytics and digital platforms to deliver actionable insights for regulators, water companies, and communities

Out of scope:

• purchase, installation, validation or deployment of existing water quality monitoring technology without demonstration of a significant technological innovation component
• projects focused solely on data collection, analysis, modelling, visualisation, or reporting without innovation in biological sensing or genomic technologies

Predicting Ecosystem Health and Resilience from eDNA via AI Driven data integration

In scope:

• predictive early warning systems capable of forecasting risks from ecosystem and ecosystem service degradation using data on emerging threats, including antimicrobial resistance, invasive non-native species, climate stress and ecosystem tipping points
• predictive early warning systems capable of identifying opportunities for nature restoration using data on biodiversity, community composition and functional genomics
• use AI to integrate multi-omics data sets, including RNA, and their rich metadata, and linking data streams such as eDNA, environmental sensors and satellite data to produce forecasting systems
• suitable for implementation within government, scalable and deployable across ecosystems, and capable of producing actionable, decision ready information and data processing methods that are accessible to government users
• bioinformatics and computational omics analysis as key enabling technologies for generating insight into environmental status and resilience from nucleotide sequencing

Out of scope:

• project focused solely on data collection, or development of sensing technologies, if included, these should be supporting innovation in analysis, interpretation and reporting
• purchase, installation, validation or deployment or sequencing equipment without innovation in analysis, interpretation and reporting

Accelerating Next Generation Veterinary Vaccine Platforms through Engineering Biology

In scope:

Platform technologies for rapid vaccine adaptation:

• modular, plug and play, veterinary vaccine platforms that enable rapid substitution of pathogen specific antigens or genetic sequences without redesigning the underlying platform
• vaccine platform technologies, including nucleic acid, mRNA, saRNA, DNA, viral vector, protein subunit, nanoparticle, plant based and other approaches applicable across multiple diseases and animal species
• engineering biology approaches that accelerate the design, flexibility, optimisation, and performance of veterinary vaccine platforms across multiple diseases and animal species
• platform capabilities that support rapid response to emerging, exotic or transboundary animal disease threats

Manufacturing, formulation and deployment technologies:

• flexible manufacturing approaches that enable rapid switching between vaccine targets using common production infrastructure
• cell free production, advanced expression systems and other platform manufacturing technologies that improve scalability, surge capacity or supply chain resilience
• novel delivery systems, thermostability, shelf life extension, reduced cold chain requirements and platform compatible adjuvants that improve vaccine availability and deployment

Out of scope:

• research to develop vaccine tools and technology focused solely on improving human health and disease burden
• projects with applications for both human and animal health, where the primary research focus is improving animal health
• incremental improvements to existing vaccines that do not substantially improve platform adaptability, vaccine performance, development timelines or manufacturing flexibility
• research to develop vaccine tools and technology that solely focus on improving health or reducing disease burden in non-food producing animals such as wildlife and companion animals is out of scope
• diagnostic, surveillance, therapeutic or other animal health technologies that are not directly related to veterinary vaccine platform development
• projects focused primarily on late stage clinical development, commercialisation, or deployment of vaccine products

Rapid diagnostics to maintain food standards and regulatory compliance

In scope:

• portable systems that enable the rapid detection or identification of foodborne risks, pathogens, contaminants, toxins, allergens and markers of authenticity
• deployable across the agri-food value chain to improve food safety, reduce fraud and support regulatory compliance
• combining advanced detection technologies, for example, biosensors or novel nucleic acid amplification diagnostics, with AI driven analytics and digital platforms to deliver actionable insights for regulators, inspectors, and businesses
• using engineering biology approaches to develop novel reagents to create new tests that could be deployed using existing platforms, for example, creation of new or modified binding proteins for use within a biosensor or lateral flow platform, or as part of a novel capture or enrichment system

Out of scope:

• purchase, installation, validation or deployment of existing food testing technology without demonstration of a significant technological innovation component
• taking an established DNA based detection technology and designing additional tests or assays to run on it
• projects focused solely on data collection or sampling without innovation in detection technologies

Background to the challenge statements from July workshop: Engineering Biology Contracts for Innovation workshop – Innovate UK Business Connect.

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing at 11am on Friday 4 September: click here to register for a place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

If you would like advice on your application or eligibility, you can contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Engineering Biology team.