Funding Competition: Transforming Cancer Therapeutics – UK

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £10 million in innovation projects to advance next-generation immunotherapies for cancer or life-changing treatment options for childhood cancers.

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• next generation immunotherapies and immunomodulatory drugs
• manipulation of the tumour microenvironment to promote immune responses against solid tumours
• novel therapeutics that consider the unique characteristics of paediatric or young people’s cancers
• clinical decision support tools to optimise treatment selection and therapeutic dosing for children and young people

Project Size

• Your project’s total costs must be between £150,000 and £4 million. The total grant request cannot exceed £2 million.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • therapeutic approaches for adult cancers that do not support the development of immuno-oncology
  • cancer diagnostics that are not a companion diagnostic for a specific immunotherapeutic or paediatric oncology approach
• 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 must:
  • 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 Aug 2024
  • end by 31 July 2026
  • last between 6 and 24 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• 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 your organisation must be a UK registered 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)
  • 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.
• 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.
  • Extenuating circumstances where overseas work may be allowable include, for example, clinical trial in a specific patient population.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.