Biomedical Catalyst: Industry-led R&D Funding Call (UK)

The aim of this industry-led R&D competition is to support SMEs to develop innovative solutions to address health, and healthcare, challenges.

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

Focus Areas

• 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
  • consumer focused self-care

Specific Themes

• Your project can focus on any health, or healthcare, sector or discipline including:
  • advanced therapies (including gene and cell therapies)
  • biosciences
  • preclinical technologies and drug target discovery
  • therapeutic and medicine development
  • diagnostics
  • medical technology and devices
  • precision medicine
  • digital health
  • independent living

Funding Information

• Up to £15 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• Your project’s total costs must be between £150,000 and £4 million. The total grant cannot exceed £2 million.

Who can apply?

• 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
    • 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
    • start by 1 May 2025
    • end by 30 September 2028
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).
  • 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)
• 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 eligible 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 cannot 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. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • Extenuating circumstances where overseas work may be allowable include, for example, clinical trials in a specific patient population. The assessors will be asked to judge whether you have sufficiently made a case for the use of overseas subcontractors.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

For more information, visit GOV.UK.