The Tropical Infectious Disease Consortium is managing a MRC Confidence in Concept fund 2015-16 of £500,000 which can be allocated to individual projects that accelerate the transition from discovery science into therapeutic, diagnostic and vaccine development. The partners of the Consortium, LSTM; the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; The Jenner Institute at Oxford University and Public Health England Microbiology Research Services in Porton Down, will jointly provide awards of up to £50,000 and allocate to eligible project proposals via an open, competitive and externally peer reviewed process.
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‘The fund is intended to accelerate relevant translational activities’, says Giancarlo Biagini, Professor of Parasitology at LSTM, Senior Manager within the Consortium and the Research Centre for Drugs & Diagnostics (RCDD). ‘Applicants should therefore aim to provide sufficient preliminary data to establish the viability of their proposed approach and show whether there is a market need for the foreseen outputs so that it provides confidence in the underlying concept. Ideally that should lead to more substantive funding from external funders’, he continued.
Projects within the following categories will be eligible to apply:
- Diagnostics
- Therapeutics
- Vaccines
- Vector control tools
- Translational focussed Informatics
- Translational enabling technologies
Eligible projects should be at the stage whereby allocated funding by the Consortium would develop the approach to the next level where it would be capable of successfully applying to larger external translational funding sources such as the MRC DPFS. It is the objective of Tropical Infectious Disease Consortium to create a critical mass necessary for UK researchers who are interested in translating their research into health benefits, which will support them in an increasingly competitive international market. The aim is to support a high number of scientifically excellent translational proposals.
Applications are required to have a Principal Investigator from one of the Consortium’s partner institutions, projects from more than one partner institutions are encouraged. Applications from more than one partner institution are encouraged and applications with SMEs/Pharma are also encouraged but must be led by the academic PI.
Completed applications should be emailed to lstmro@lstmed.ac.uk by 30th April 2016.
It is anticipated that decisions on awards will be issued in June 2016. More information, including list of selection criteria and application form, can be found here.