Biomedical Catalyst 2023 Round 1: Industry-led R&D

Up to £25 million to develop innovative solutions to health and healthcare challenges

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £25 million in innovation projects. These will be to support UK registered businesses develop innovative solutions to address significant health or healthcare challenges.

The aim of this industry-led R&D competition is to support the development of innovative solutions to health and healthcare challenges.

Your project can focus on:

• 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
• transforming the delivery of healthcare
• the development of digital health technologies

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

The Industry-led research and development (R&D) stream of the Biomedical Catalyst programme supports pre-market R&D projects. Applicants must be able to demonstrate existing evidence of commercial and technical feasibility.

Applications must show how they will improve the competitiveness and productivity of at least one UK SME involved in the project.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Your project

Your project must:

• have total project costs between £150,000 and £4 million
• not exceed a grant request of £2 million
• have at least 50% of the total project costs shared by the SMEs, if collaborative
• start by 1 October 2023
• end by 30 September 2026
• last between 6 months and 36 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. If you have requested an overall grant of over £500,000, and your online application is successful at written assessment, you may be invited to attend an interview.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. They will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by Innovate UK, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Who can apply?

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

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in Innovate UK's Funding rules.

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, 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)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

Partners must accept terms and conditions (T&Cs) and complete the subsidy question in order for the application to be submitted.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. Innovate UK will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Extenuating circumstances where overseas work may be allowable include, for example; clinical trial in a specific patient population.

You must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. Innovate UK will decide whether to approve your request via email.

The application assessors will be asked to judge whether you have sufficiently made a case for the use of overseas subcontractors.

Number of applications

An SME can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If an SME is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

A large business, academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

Proposals

The aim of this industry-led R&D competition is to support the development of innovative solutions to health and healthcare challenges.

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

Further information is available at the UKRI Good Research Hub and NC3R’s animal welfare guidance.

Your 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
• a demonstration of clinical utility and effectiveness
• a demonstration of safety and efficacy (including phase 1 and 2 clinical trials)
• regulatory planning

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different markets, technologies, strands and themes. We call this a portfolio approach.

Specific themes

Your project can focus on health or a healthcare sector or discipline:

• biosciences
• advanced therapies (gene and cell therapies)
• diagnostic, medical technology and devices
• digital health
• independent living and wellbeing
• precision medicine
• preclinical technologies and drug target discovery
• therapeutic and medicine development

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

Research categories

Innovate UK will fund industrial research projects and experimental development projects, as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Dates:

4 January 2023 - Competition opens
12 January 2023 Online briefing event: watch the recording
1 March 2023 11:00am - Competition closes
21 April 2023 - Invite to interview
16 May 2023- Interview start
22 May 2023 - Interview end
2 June 2023 -Applicants notified

Interested in applying? Get in touch to learn how Myriad Associates can help:

• Win Rate - Myriad Associates’ boast a near 70% success rate with Innovate UK grant applications. This is among the highest success rate in the industry.
• Proven templates & tools for success - Our templates make it easy to collaborate & prepare a winning bid.
• Honest & Trustworthy – We will not waste your time or money. If we feel your application won't succeed, we will tell you before we undertake the application process.
• Highly rated UK & European bid writers - We have a highly experienced team of bid writers with proven UK & European success. We've secured over €80m in grant funding for our UK & EU clients.
• Unlimited revisions - Our grant writers provide feedback on both successful and unsuccessful grant applications. We review this feedback with you to give you ongoing advice and guidance.
• Risk-free Eligibility Call – Call us for a free eligibility call to see if you have an application worth applying for.

Click here to discuss your application with one of our expert grant bid writers or visit Innovate UK to find out more.

Where do I find more information?

For more information on this grant, please visit: https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1427/overview/08a0b0b3-bd08-4226-836f-57b25f459621#summary 

Alternatively, contact us if you'd like to know whether your project would likely qualify for this grant.