To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size, including those based in the EU, EEA or internationally
• 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. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.

Projects must:

• start by 1 July 2026
• end by 31 March 2027
• last between six and nine months
• have total costs of no more than £200,000, inclusive of VAT

Use of animals in research and innovation

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Applicants must ensure that all of the proposed work within projects, both that in the UK and internationally, will comply with the UKRI guidance on the use of animals in research and innovation.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

The aim of this competition is to support organisations developing disruptive and innovative alternatives for improved pharmacokinetic (PK) and cardiac safety studies to:

• further qualify the methods towards broad adoption
• or improve their applicability in a drug development setting

Your project must focus on developing new approaches or further developing existing approaches that can be deployed within a drug development setting. It must enable progress towards the government targets of:

• more than 35% reduction in dedicated PK studies using dogs or non-human primates (NHPs)
• more than 50% reduction in dedicated cardiovascular safety studies using dogs or NHPs by 2030

This is a two phase competition, with contracts awarded only for Phase 1. You must define your goals in your application and an outline of your plan for phase 2.

Phase 1 must demonstrate how the proposed work will establish feasibility and lay the groundwork for achieving these outcomes in Phase 2.

Ultimately, your project is expected to deliver a model that aims to meet the accuracy, cost and throughput requirements to credibly replace equivalent in vivo models.

You must demonstrate a practical and credible route to market supported by a clear commercialisation plan and include plans to achieve regulatory engagement where required.

You must intend to exploit the primary outputs of these projects in the UK.

This competition supports the delivery of the UK Government’s Replacing animals in science strategy.

In this competition we want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, technological maturities, theme and location. We call this a portfolio approach.

Your project can focus on, but is not limited to, one or more of the following:

Pharmacokinetic studies

• improving the predictive capacity of artificial intelligence or machine learning (AI or ML) assisted pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) prediction models
• increasing the exposure capabilities of in vitro models for the generation of PK or PD data
• improved and increased use of existing PK or PD data to better inform modelling approaches and increase their scope
• demonstrating combinatorial in vitro or in silico approaches to reduce the numbers of animals used in dedicated PK studies

Cardiovascular Safety

• improve the robustness and reproducibility of existing in vitro assays in the generation of cardiovascular (CV) safety data
• improve the predictive capacity of in silico cardiac safety models
• improve the accuracy, reliability of combinatorial in silico and in vitro cardiovascular safety assays
• address current unmet needs in cardiovascular safety with the novel generation or application of alternative approaches
• demonstrate the integration of alternatives into a standardised framework for cardiovascular safety that can be readily deployed across industry R&D
• the focus can be on early screening or in-depth mechanistic toxicity studies

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing at 2pm on Wednesday 4 March: click here to register for a place.

If you would like help to find a subcontractor, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Health team.