Funding opportunity

Pre-announcement: Engineer next generation veterinary vaccine technology platforms

• Opportunity status: Upcoming
• Funders: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
• Co-funders: Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Funding type: Grant
• Total fund: £12,500,000
• Award range: £3,250,000 - £4,000,000
• Publication date: 14 April 2025
• Opening date: 11 June 2025 9:00am UK time
• Closing date: 16 September 2025 4:00pm UK time

A joint BBSRC-Defra programme aims to fund ‘plug and play’ veterinary vaccine platforms, leveraging transformative technologies, interdisciplinary approaches, and cross-sector partnerships, focusing on entire platform technology pipeline from antigen discovery to delivery and underpinned by immunological understanding to address unmet veterinary vaccine needs.

Projects must be led by UK research organisations eligible for BBSRC funding.

The full economic cost (FEC) of your project will be up to £4 million. BBSRC will fund 80% of the FEC with a maximum of £3.2 million per project over a maximum of five years.

This is a pre-announcement, and the information may change.

The funding opportunity will open on 11 June 2025. More information will be available on this page then.

Who can apply

To lead a project, you must be based at an eligible organisation. Check if your organisation is eligible.

Who is eligible to apply

This funding opportunity invites applicants from UK-based organisations that meet Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)’s standard eligibility conditions, including:

• higher education institutions
• independent research organisations
• approved public sector research establishments
• UKRI-funded labs and facilities

For applicants who do not have a contract of employment for the duration of the proposed project, by submitting an application the research organisation is confirming, if it is successful:

• contracts will be extended beyond the end date of the project
• all necessary support for the project and the applicants will be provided, including mentorship and career development for early career researchers

Check if you and your organisation are eligible for research and innovation funding.

Project leads and co-leads

Individuals can only be project lead or co-lead on only one proposal.

This funding opportunity aims to embed a One Health approach in vaccine research. We expect the leadership of all project teams to reflect this.

Each grant should include co-leads that represent a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectorial team. It is strongly encouraged that these investigators span a range of distinct disciplines. These can include disciplines not traditionally involved in veterinary sciences to facilitate novel thinking. Experts representing different sectors and organisations should have equal status on the project to ensure the principles of a One Health approach is embedded in the project.

In addition, one of the co-leads must be an early career researcher who has a proven track record of research in their own discipline.

We encourage applications from individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, either as project lead or co-lead.

Project partners

A project partner is defined as a third-party person or organisation that will support your research project through cash or in-kind contributions such as:

• staff time
• access to equipment
• sites or facilities
• the provision of data
• software or materials
• recruitment of people as research participants
• providing samples for the project

Project partners could include:

• members of the business community
• policymakers and others in the public, private and third sectors
• practitioners such as veterinarians, farmers, clinicians
• representatives from civil society, humanitarian and independent non-government organisations
• local communities

Each project partner must provide a statement of support. If your application involves industry partners, they must provide information if the relationship falls within the industry collaboration framework.

Who cannot be included as a team project partner

Any individual included in your application core team cannot also be a project partner.
Any organisation that employs a member of the application core team cannot be a project partner organisation, this includes other departments within the same organisation.

If you are collaborating with someone in your organisation, consider including them in the core team as project co-lead, or specialist. They cannot be a project partner.

Project subcontractor

A project subcontractor is defined as a third-party individual who is not employed as staff on the grant, who is subcontracted by a participating organisation to deliver a specific piece of work. Subcontractors will be allowed in line with UKRI terms and conditions for research grants.

Project partner and subcontractor entitlement to project outputs and intellectual property

Entitlement to the outputs of a project or intellectual property will be determined between the parties involved, however any access to project outputs or intellectual property must be in line with any relevant subsidy control regulation. Under UKRI terms and conditions for research grants you must always ensure that the grant funding awarded to you is compliant with the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Any entitlements will need to be set out in a formal collaboration agreement if a grant is awarded, as per FEC grant condition RGC 12.1.

What we will support

We will support:

• applications from research groups that combine a range of talent and expertise from different disciplines, and that foster a cultural diversity of stakeholders and researchers with novel perspectives
• multi-disciplinary collaborations and partnerships, including the involvement of private sector partners and other stakeholders. However, businesses cannot be funded through this opportunity

Partnerships with relevant government agencies is strongly encouraged, but not mandatory.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to achieving equality of opportunity for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers.

We support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances. This includes:

• career breaks
• support for people with caring responsibilities
• flexible working
• alternative working patterns

UKRI can offer disability and accessibility support for UKRI applicants and grant holders during the application and assessment process.

What we're looking for

Aim

The aims of the programme are to:

• engineer next generation ‘plug and play’ veterinary vaccine technology platforms by exploiting cutting edge transformative technologies underpinned by deep understanding of host immune response and host-pathogen interactions
• characterise platforms by conducting systematic and comparative evaluation to support the ‘plug and play’ framework for developing safe and cost-effective vaccines
• embed a One Health approach that will foster the development of new vaccine technology platforms suitable for use in animals and humans

Scope

Through this programme, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) aims to deliver a strategic research programme that will catalyse the UK research and innovation community to use multi-disciplinary approaches to engineer next generation veterinary vaccine technology platforms. It will lead to forming a ‘plug and play’ modular design to enable rapid response and large-scale manufacturing associated with a smaller footprint, lower cost, and easier deployment.

The scope of the programme will target areas within the pipeline of platform technologies, from antigen discovery and delivery through to immunological understanding with focus on addressing key unmet needs in veterinary vaccine research and innovation. See the Global Veterinary Vaccinology Research and Innovation Landscape Survey Report | STAR-IDAZ on the STAR-IDAZ website.

This programme will focus on transformative technologies that will offer mechanisms to engineer next generation veterinary vaccines through ‘de novo’ platforms or modifying existing platforms. To enable a step change in the field of veterinary vaccinology, a systematic and comparative evaluation of platforms is required. A greater understanding is needed of the platform, administration route, pathogen type and the species-specific protective immunity differences relating to vaccine technology platforms and the efficacy of potential products. Such an analysis could include, but not limited to the:

• functionality of the platforms across species
• administration routes, for example, mucosal or intramuscular
• choice of pathogens
• species-specific differences in protective efficacy of the platforms and how these induce different immune responses for effective implementation
• systematic evaluation of vaccine efficacy and safety across species and pathogen

The research funded through this programme is to develop vaccines for livestock and aquaculture and to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The scope of the programme is disease agnostic.

This programme will fund research consortium that are cross-sector partnerships of academia, industry, and where appropriate government agencies (for example: if working on statutory disease linked to reference laboratories). This is to ensure the ultimately successful development, registration and deployment of novel vaccines through a thorough assessment of their base platform technology.

It is envisaged that this investment will catalyse transformation of veterinary vaccines research and innovation beyond existing capabilities through:

• the engineering of novel and well-characterised technology platforms
• the development and evaluation of new tools, technologies, and approaches for veterinary vaccines up to the proof-of-concept stage in the respective target animal species
• significant research advances in ‘unmet’ needs of veterinary vaccines, such as mucosal and bacterial vaccines
• adopting transformative technologies, such as artificial intelligence or engineering biology, which are underpinned by immunological data to allow for joined up approaches for rational design of veterinary vaccines
• platform technologies which can be shared across veterinary and medical communities.
• the development of next generation veterinary vaccine platforms that can be taken into late-stage vaccine development through interest from industry

For more information on the background of this funding opportunity, go to the Additional information section.

We encourage the research and innovation community to work together when developing applications. We expect to fund up to three research consortia which will create a cohort of projects that can coordinate with one another to tackling the challenge of platform technologies for veterinary vaccines.

We strongly encourage new partnerships that encompass disciplines not traditionally involved in veterinary sciences to facilitate novel thinking and increase capacity in veterinary vaccinology field.

We expect projects to harness expertise from across the bioscience community and beyond, including but not limited to:

• artificial intelligence specialists
• chemists
• computational and data scientists
• engineers
• immunologists
• industry
• medical scientists
• One Health experts
• policy makers
• social scientists
• synthetic biologists
• veterinarians

We strongly encourage early career researcher and research technical professionals to be involved in funded projects. At least one co-lead must be an early career researcher.

Duration

The duration of this award is maximum of five years.

Funding available

Projects will be selected for funding jointly by BBSRC and Defra.

The 100% FEC of your project can be up to £4 million.

BBSRC will fund 80% of the FEC.

Total cost to BBSRC must be between £2.5 million and £3.2 million. We are aiming to fund up to three consortia fostering a One Health approach.

What we will fund

Funded consortia should:

• foster cross-sector partnerships that bring together a range of expertise and disciplines, adopting multi-disciplinary working
• encompass disciplines not traditionally involved in veterinary sciences to facilitate novel thinking
• focus on veterinary vaccine technology platforms that can have broad applicability and are not only focused on tackling one disease or a single pathogen
• focus on any pathogens and AMR effecting animal health
• improve the health of any livestock or aquaculture relevant species

What we will not fund

Funded consortia should not:

• focus on developing a single vaccine for a single disease or pathogen. Aspects of the project can focus on a single disease or pathogen, but tools and technologies should have broad applicability across multiple conditions
• fund commercialisation and deployment of vaccine technology
• develop vaccine tools and technology that solely focus on improving human health and disease burden
• develop vaccines tools and technology that solely focus on improving health or reducing disease burden in non-food producing animals such as wildlife and companion animals

You cannot request funding for costs such as:

• product development costs
• fees or stipends for postgraduate studentships
• publication costs

Applications that are deemed out of scope by the BBSRC will be rejected without reference to expert review.

Supporting skills and talent

We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.

Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.

As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.

Further guidance and information about TR&I, including where applicants can find additional support.

How to apply

We are running this funding opportunity on the new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service so please ensure that your organisation is registered. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system. We will publish full details on how to apply when the funding opportunity opens.

The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application.

Only the lead research organisation can submit an application to UKRI.

Personal data

Processing personal data

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.

We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our privacy notice.

BBSRC, as part of UKRI, will need to share the application and any personal information that it contains with Defra so that they can participate in the assessment process. For more information on how Defra uses personal information, visit Personal information charter (GOV.UK).

Sensitive information

If you or a core team member need to tell us something you wish to remain confidential, email vaccinology@bbsrc.ukri.org

Include in the subject line: [the funding opportunity title; sensitive information; your Funding Service application number].

Typical examples of confidential information include:

• individual is unavailable until a certain date (for example due to parental leave)
• declaration of interest
• additional information about eligibility to apply that would not be appropriately shared in the ‘Applicant and team capability’ section
• conflict of interest for UKRI to consider in reviewer or panel participant selection
• the application is an invited resubmission

For information about how UKRI handles personal data, read UKRI’s privacy notice.

Publication of outcomes

BBSRC, as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the UKRI Gateway to Research.

How we will assess your application

Assessment process

Full application

The full criteria for assessment will be published when the full application funding opportunity opens.

Principles of assessment

We support the San Francisco declaration on research assessment and recognise the relationship between research assessment and research integrity.

Find out about the UKRI principles of assessment and decision making.

Contact details

Get help with your application

If you have a question and the answers aren’t provided on this page

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Helpdesk is committed to helping users of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service as effectively and as quickly as possible. In order to manage cases at peak volume times, the Helpdesk will triage and prioritise those queries with an imminent opportunity deadline or a technical issue. Enquiries raised where information is available on the Funding Finder opportunity page and should be understood early in the application process (for example, regarding eligibility or content/remit of an opportunity) will not constitute a priority case and will be addressed as soon as possible.

Contact details

For help and advice on costings and writing your application please contact your research office in the first instance, allowing sufficient time for your organisation’s submission process.

For questions related to this specific funding opportunity please contact:

• BBSRC: vaccinology@bbsrc.ukri.org
• Defra: erritt@defra.gov.uk

Any queries regarding the system or the submission of applications through the Funding Service should be directed to the helpdesk.

Email: support@funding-service.ukri.org

Phone: 01793 547490

Our phone lines are open:

• Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5:00pm
• Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm

To help us process queries quicker, we request that users highlight the council and opportunity name in the subject title of their email query, include the application reference number, and refrain from contacting more than one mailbox at a time.

For further information on submitting an application read How applicants use the Funding Service.

Additional info

Background

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in collaboration with Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and other global funding organisations have helped expert consultations and carried out surveys to identify gaps in veterinary vaccinology research. The following are some key examples.

The Global Vaccinology Research and Innovation Landscape Report published in January 2022 (PDF, 2KB) was an analysis of the Survey on the Global Veterinary Vaccinology Research and Innovation Landscape conducted by BBSRC on behalf of STAR-IDAZ International Research Consortium on Animal Health (STAR-IDAZ) and the veterinary vaccinology research funders and programme owners.

STAR-IDAZ highlights priority topics and publishes reports and research roadmaps that should be taken into account when applying for this funding opportunity.

Research and innovation impact

Impact can be defined as the long-term intended or unintended effect research and innovation has on society, economy and the environment; to individuals, organisations, and the wider global population.

Webinar for potential applicants

We will hold a webinar on 12 May 2025 at 10:00am. This will provide more information about the funding opportunity and a chance to ask questions.

Register for the webinar

If you have any initial questions email: vaccinology@bbsrc.ukri.org and these will be answered at the end of the webinar.

Workshop for potential applicants

BBSRC, Defra, the International Veterinary Vaccinology Network (IVVN) and the British Society for Immunology (BSI) will hold an in-person workshop in Nottingham on 24 June 2025.

Apply to attend the workshop (Jisc Online Surveys).

If you have any questions in the meantime, please email vaccinology@bbsrc.ukri.org

Research disruption due to COVID-19

We recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major interruptions and disruptions across our communities. We are committed to ensuring that individual applicants and their wider team, including partners and networks, are not penalised for any disruption to their career, such as:

• breaks and delays
• disruptive working patterns and conditions
• the loss of ongoing work
• role changes that may have been caused by the pandemic

Reviewers and panel members will be advised to consider the unequal impacts that COVID-19 related disruption might have had on the capability to deliver and career development of those individuals included in the application. They will be asked to consider the capability of the applicant and their wider team to deliver the research they are proposing.

Where disruptions have occurred, you can highlight this within your application if you wish, but there is no requirement to detail the specific circumstances that caused the disruption.