Call for Translational Award applications

Deadlines for upcoming rounds:

April 2018 round

• Preliminary outline application deadline – 23^rd April 2018
• Full application deadline – 5^th September 2018

October 2018 round

• Preliminary outline application deadline – 15^th October 2018
• Full application deadline – tbc

The Translational Award supports early stage development of cardiovascular medicines and technologies for up to £250,000.

Our Translational Awards Committee meets twice a year to consider applications and provide support and advice.

It is a two stage process. All preliminary outlines will be considered by the Committee and if successful, you will be invited to submit a full application, which will be assessed at the next meeting.

For further details visit https://www.bhf.org.uk/translationalaward or email the team at researchtranslation@bhf.org.uk

Research Experience Placements

The Research Experience Placements (REPs) scheme provides support for undergraduate summer research placements.

The scheme is now open for 2018 and an application form and further information can be found here (application form also attached).

Closing date: Thursday 29 March 2018 at 1pm

2018 BBSRC-REP-Application

31 May 2018, 4pm (outline applications) (call opens 3 April 2018)              November 2018 TBC (invited full applications)

MRC Experimental Medicine Challenge Grants (EMCG): Discovery science in humans

https://www.mrc.ac.uk/funding/browse/experimental-medicine-challenge-grants/experimental-medicine-challenge-grants-discovery-science-in-humans/

Experimental medicine is a broad term and refers to “investigation undertaken in humans, relating where appropriate to model systems, to identify mechanisms of pathophysiology or disease, or to demonstrate proof-of-concept evidence of the validity and importance of new discoveries or treatments.”

EM studies should be hypothesis led/defining/refining

N.B. MRC is aware that the proportion of grants awarded in the field of experimental medicine is very low across all MRC Boards (only 25% of MRC grants even involve humans).

EMCG will fund studies which address the biggest gaps in our understanding of the causes and progression of human disease and which will produce major new mechanistic insights, with potential application to new therapeutic or diagnostic approaches and opportunities for “reverse translation” to basic research.

Applications should aim to produce major improvements in the understanding of human disease mechanisms, and must be:

• Challenge-led: As well as addressing “challenging” research questions, all proposals must involve an experimental intervention or “challenge” in humans, perturbing the system to explore disease mechanism. A challenge may be pharmacological, immunological, physiological, psychological, infectious etc.
• Human-focused: The focus should be on understanding human disease through experimental investigation in humans. While projects may include a small element of non-human work (if informed by or informing the work in humans), the focus of the project should be on human participants.
• Ambitious and innovative: Proposals should address important medical questions in new ways. Proposals should be sufficiently ambitious and demanding to warrant funding through this scheme rather than through standard research grant support. Proposals may use novel readouts or technologies.
• Experiment-driven: Proposals should be structured around an experiment designed to address a mechanistic question with a clear plan for establishing causal relationships and mechanisms. Proposals may include the use of drugs, other interventions or measures with established safety profiles in new settings/conditions. e.g. repurposing drugs as tool compounds to probe disease mechanism.
• Hypothesis-led/defining/refining: EM is more than hypothesis-free characterisation, and is more exploratory than hypothesis-testing confirmatory work. EM is more than just data collection: proposals may include, but should not solely focus on, deep characterisation/phenotyping of subjects.
• Funding available: Up to £10m is available. The EMCG scheme will support a range of award scales, from smaller, focused, more exploratory and highly innovative projects (based e.g. on an intellectually sound hypothesis but perhaps lacking extensive pilot data), to large programmatic awards based on a more substantial platform of evidence. It is expected that most grants would be between 3-5 years’ duration.

Applicants are encouraged to explore collaboration with industry to facilitate the above experimental approach (however this is not mandatory).

If an industrial partner is collaborating on the grant applicants, MICA forms will not need to be completed for the outline stage but you will need to submit a MICA and signed Heads of Terms with the full application

Outline applications to be submitted via Je-S. Outline case for support form on website.

Please see website for EMCG assessment criteria, further guidance document and FAQs.

Note that they expect detailed experimental plans; methodologically and statistically rigorous in design; and, for longer-term programmes, risk mitigation plans.

There will be milestones and stage gates to de-risk.

The following are out of remit for this initiative:

• Full translational programmes developing or evaluating new pharmacological interventions (these are however within the wider MRC remit, see the MRC DPFS scheme);
• Observational studies involving no experimental challenge. Proposals which are predominantly descriptive are unlikely to be shortlisted;
• Applications solely limited to screening chemical libraries, investigating the mechanism of action of novel compounds or dosing strategies.

The webinar held last time they ran this scheme (2015) is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvL-_yOv34A&t=268s

Please note that they reserve the right to amend the review process in the case of high demand

We are delighted to announce the inaugural call for applications to the Hamied Foundation UK-India AMR Visiting Professorship scheme.

The scheme, generously supported by the Yusuf and Farida Hamied Foundation, will offer awards of up to £5000 to support UK researchers wishing to visit India, to develop long-term collaborations in the highly-important area of antimicrobial resistance research.

Deadline for applications is Friday 06 April 2018, 16:00 GMT and details on how to apply can be found on the scheme webpage. Please see Hamied Foundation AMR eFlyer for further information. I would be most grateful if you could forward this to any relevant departments or individuals that may be interested in this opportunity.

If there are any enquiries, please direct these to amr@acmedsci.ac.uk.