You can apply for funding from this scheme for academically led pre-clinical development and early clinical testing of novel therapeutics, devices and diagnostics, including repurposing of existing therapies.
Awards are made every year and there are deadlines every four months. We generally fund 80% of the full economic costs of your research, and your research organisation must agree to find the balance.
You should be based at an eligible research organisation, which include:
Our general guidance for applicants contains more details on institutional and individual eligibility.
You can apply for academically led translational projects that aim to improve prevention, diagnosis, prognosis or treatment of significant health needs, or to develop research tools that increase the efficiency of developing interventions.
All diseases and interventions are eligible for support. You can also address global health issues.
Support is available for the following stages of development:
Your projects can start and finish at any point. You can submit follow-on proposals where you can justify the need for continued support.
You can apply for funding for work in:
This funding opportunity will not support:
There is no limit to the amount of funding you can apply for or the length of your project. You should instead justify the timescale and resources needed in the context of the proposed work.
We encourage working with charities or industry where these partnerships can add value to the project, for example in terms of access to expertise, technologies, reagents or funding. Please note that collaboration is not a prerequisite for application.
Applications involving collaboration with industry should consult the MRC industry collaboration agreement (MRC website). Please note that we do not fund the work of your industrial partners.
You must first submit an outline proposal via the Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) system. The funding opportunity is open for six weeks leading up to the deadline, and there are deadlines for outline proposals in July, November and March.
When applying select:
You must use our outline proposal form (DOCX, 271KB) for your Je-S application. Please read our guidance for outline stage applicants (PDF, 228KB) before applying.
If successful at the outline stage, you will be invited to submit a full application. We will send guidance on completing a full application.
We aim to complete the process from outline submission to full decision in approximately 26 weeks.
Your application will be assessed in a two-stage process. Your outline proposal will first be considered by an independent panel of experts (MRC website).
The panel will assess your proposal on:
If successful, you will be invited to submit a full proposal. This undergoes external peer review before a further and more detailed review by the panel. All applicants will receive feedback from the assessment process within eight weeks of the panel meeting.
You can find out more about how you will be assessed in our assessment guidelines (PDF, 70KB).
General enquiries: dpfsanddcs@mrc.ukri.org
You are encouraged to get in touch with the programme manager to discuss your proposal ideas:
Dr Suzanne Rix: suzanne.rix@mrc.ukri.org
Digital health (software development / AI tools) and imaging
This scheme was established in 2008 and is run by MRC. It is a key part of the MRC translational research strategy and supports the translation of fundamental discovery into benefits to human health.
You can read about projects that have won funding under the scheme in our collection of case studies.
