SBRI funding competition opens for applications

The Department of Health will invest up to £35 million in projects that develop new vaccines against infectious diseases.

This competition is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) in partnership with the Department of Health and the Medical Research Council. Organisations from academic, industry and government backgrounds are welcome to apply.

The SBRI competition is to support the development of vaccines against 12 diseases, including Ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg, and Nipah. The vaccines should be appropriate for use in low and middle income countries (LMICs). When developing vaccines, applying institutions should consider: biomarkers of vaccines safety, temperature stability, ease of use in LMIC settings, speed of manufacture, and more.

Please note: the competition will not fund projects that cover pre-clinical discovery work, diagnostics not set out in the brief, and vaccines not on the UK Vaccine Network’s priority list. Successful contracts however are expected to be worth up to £3million.

The competition opens 23 January and applications close at noon on 19 April 2017.  For more information about the competition and how to apply, see the brief on the Department of Health website.