Biomedical catalyst 2021: early and late stage awards

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £18 million to develop innovative healthcare products, technologies and processes. This funding is from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Your project can address:

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

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

This competition combines the early and late-stage strands of the Biomedical Catalyst.

Your project must:

• have total eligible costs between £250,000 and £4 million
• start from 1 April 2022
• last between 12 months and 36 months

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:

• be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Academic institutions or research organisations cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation, or research technology organisation (RTO), and must work in the UK as above. Large companies can be collaborators but will not be able to claim grant funding.

When a business leads on an application it can collaborate in a further 2 applications. If a business is not leading any applications, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications.

Research organisations, academic institutions, charities, not-for-profit and public sector organisations can collaborate on any number of applications.

Scope

The aim of this early and late-stage competition is to enable businesses to create a data package that can support the further development of their products.

The project can include:

• experimental evaluation (at laboratory scale)
• use of in vitro and in vivo models to evaluate proof of concept or safety
• exploring potential production mechanisms
• prototyping
• product development planning
• intellectual property protection
• demonstrating of clinical utility and effectiveness
• demonstrating of safety and efficacy (including phase 1 and 2 clinical trials)
• regulatory planning

Your project must focus on the development of a product or process that is an innovative solution to a defined health or care challenge.

We will only support innovation projects conducted to the highest standards of animal welfare.

Visit the UKRI Good Research Hub and NC3R’s animal welfare guidance for further information.

Your project can focus on any health and care sector or discipline. We particularly welcome applications that support innovation in the following areas:

• child health technologies
• innovations that support clinical trials in the UK
• biomedical innovations that combat the threat of antimicrobial resistance

Your project can align with one or more of the following:

• medical technologies and devices
• stratified healthcare
• advanced therapies (gene and cell therapies)
• digital health
• drug discovery
• diagnostics

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

An online briefing event will be held at 10.30am on 15th June: click here to access the Zoom link (no advance registration needed).