To lead a collaborative project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME).

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must have the facilities or capabilities to support technology scale up and validation at scale for Engineering Biology innovations.

Your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. Any further applications by the same organisation as lead will be made ineligible.

An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications and if not leading, can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £200,000 and £750,000
• last up to 24 months
• start by 1 February 2027
• end by 31 January 2029
• include either as a partner or subcontractor a UK registered organisation with the facilities or capabilities to support technology scale up and validation at scale for engineering biology innovations

The aim of this competition is to support projects that enable scaling of lab proven engineering biology innovations by:

• enabling SMEs to scale innovations to pilot or demonstration scale
• facilitating affordable access to specialised UK engineering biology scale-up capabilities in the public and private sectors, such as catapults, bio-foundries and CMOs
• ⁠validating technical and economic viability of scaling engineering biology innovations in commercially relevant settings

To be considered within scope for this competition, the primary innovation and competitive advantage underpinning the project must arise from or enable engineering biology.

For the purpose of this competition 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 proposal must clearly:

• demonstrate how the innovation focuses on engineering biology as defined in this brief
• demonstrate how the innovation fits with one or more of the specific themes for the competition
• deliver robust validation work packages to demonstrate commercial viability, which may include a techno-economic assessment (TEA) and impact validation
• evidence the robustness of the innovation at lab-scale and it’s readiness to scale
• explain how the proposed work will lead to growth of your company in the UK

You must partner with, or subcontract to, a UK registered organisation with the appropriate infrastructure and capabilities to support the technological transition of engineering biology innovations into industrial scale applications.

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

Projects should predominantly focus on the scale up of engineering biology innovations. Elements of project work that support the scale up of the technology such as validation, manufacturing or regulatory progression as appropriate, are in scope for this competition.

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

Your project must focus on developing or applying engineering biology solutions to one or more of the following themes:

• Health
• Agriculture and Food
• Chemicals and materials
• Low Carbon fuels
• Waste and environment
• Cross cutting technology, service development

We are not funding projects that:

• are not engineering biology focused
• are not partnering or subcontracting with a UK registered organisation with the appropriate infrastructure and capabilities to support the transition of engineering biology innovations into industrial scale applications
• do not include any pilot scale testing, demonstration or commercial validation activities or work packages
• are for infrastructure expansion or involve capital purchases
• are not focussed on the competition themes
• include the clinical development of any biologic, vaccine or engineering biology derived small molecule
• are clinical trials or preclinical evaluation of therapeutics
• are fundamental research, feasibility studies or discovery based

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing event at a date to be confirmed: check the competition page for details. A briefing recording and downloadable slides will be available after the event.

Innovate UK Business Connect will also hold a networking event for innovators and scale-up providers on Wednesday 9 September 2026 (9.30am-4pm) in London, and potential applicants are invited to attend this event.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Biotechnology team.