Funding Competition: Needle Free Medicines Delivery Technologies (Feasibility Studies) – UK

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £1 million in innovation projects. The aim of this competition is to fund feasibility studies investigating technologies enabling needle free administration of medicines. These include the development of novel formulation approaches and manufacturing technologies for the dosage form applicable to therapeutics, including complex medicines and vaccines.

Your proposal must deliver the following benefits:

• drive economic recovery and levelling up by supporting job creation, skills development and inward investment in medicines manufacturing
• drive health security and patient benefit whilst demonstrating improved productivity and reduced time to market
• de-risk the development of needle free delivery technologies in medicine manufacturing
• support equality, diversity and inclusion via project initiatives and project outcomes

Specific Themes

Your project can focus on identifying, developing, and testing manufacturing methods for the formulation or administration methods for needle free delivery, of vaccines and medicines, including but not limited to:

• transdermal delivery
• mucosal delivery
• validation of delivery methods
• human health applications
• other delivery routes which lend themselves to needle free

Project Size

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £50,000 and £100,000.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • focused on medicines discovery
  • diagnostics
  • animal health products
  • consumer health products
  • training
  • validation facilities
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last between 6 and 12 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start by 1 July 2024
    • end by 30 June 2025
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone you must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • be an SME, if you are a sole applicant
• 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 (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in 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. They 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.
• Number of applications
  • A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.
  • If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
  • An academic institution, charity, not for profit research and technology organisation (RTO) or public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.