Biomedical Catalyst 2020 - An Overview

The next round of the Biomedical Catalyst launched on 27th July and closes on 7th October. £30 million is available to support industry-led research and development projects that seek to provide solutions to Health and Care challenges.

 

The Biomedical Catalyst funding programme supports UK businesses to test and develop innovative technologies for health and care. The programme provides funding to help UK SMEs speed up the process of bringing new products to market and secure onward investment. The Biomedical Catalyst was established in 2012 with the aim of delivering growth to the UK life sciences sector, delivering innovative life sciences products and services into healthcare more quickly and effectively, and providing support for research and development.

 

Support is available for any life science sector or discipline, including medical technologies and devices, advanced therapies (cell and gene therapies), digital health, drug discovery, and diagnostics.

 

UK businesses can apply with projects that will solve a health and care challenge. Projects will develop innovative technologies or processes for:

• disease prevention and proactive management of health and chronic conditions
• earlier and more accurate detection of disease, leading to better patient outcomes
• tailored treatments that either change the underlying disease or offer potential cures

 

The Biomedical Catalyst has 4 competitions designed to support SMEs to progress projects that are at different stages of development:

• Feasibility award – designed for projects that have developed an innovative concept or carried out experimental proof of concept but have not validated the technology.
• Primer award – for conducting a technical evaluation of an idea through to proof of concept in a model system.
• Early-stage award – aims to create a data package that is sufficient to support the testing of your product or process in a clinical setting or other relevant environment.
• Late-stage award – designed to test a well-developed concept and show its effectiveness in a relevant environment. Projects are expected to build on prior credible research on a product prototype or process.

 

You can apply for funding to lead a project if you are a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).  You will need to be based in the UK and intend to carry out your project work in the UK. Depending on the stage of your project and size of your business, you can work alone or collaborate with others.

 

The next competition is for Early & Late strands of the Biomedical Catalyst and opened on Monday 27th July 2020, and will close on Wednesday 7th October 2020 at 11:00am. You can view information on this funding competition here.

 

More general information on the Biomedical Catalyst is available here.