GOSH Charity & LifeArc Translational Research Accelerator Grants

This funding scheme is not currently open for applications. The next round of funding is expected to open in early 2025.

Through this scheme, GOSH Charity and LifeArc invite milestone-driven applications which aim to improve the prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment of rare disease or that focus on developing research tools that increase the efficiency of developing interventions in rare disease.

The scheme is designed to support applications on the translational pathway with the expectation that researchers will continue to develop their therapy or diagnostic after this funding, either by securing further funding from external translational schemes (from funders such as the Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research, Innovate UK and others), or partnering with or licensing to industry.

Projects must be led by active research professionals based at GOSH or the ICH. Collaborations with industry and other academic partners are encouraged where relevant to the project. Lead applicants may only submit one application per round.

The following activities are eligible for support:

• developing candidate therapeutic entities (e.g. drug discovery)
• pre-clinical testing of novel therapeutic entities in vitro or in vivo
• pre-clinical validation for repurposed therapeutics
• early-phase clinical trials of novel therapeutic entities (phases 1/2)
• clinical trials of existing therapeutics repurposed for a new indication
• developing and testing novel devices
• developing and testing diagnostics (including biomarker validation)

All modalities of intervention are eligible for support from the scheme, including small molecules, peptides, antibodies, vaccines, regenerative medicine, cell and gene therapy, devices, surgical techniques and psychological approaches. An indication of where this scheme fits within the wider translational funding pathway can be seen in the funding call document.

There is a total of £1 million available under this call.

There is no formal upper limit on the funds that can be applied for, but it is anticipated that we will fund a small number of high-quality projects of up to three years duration. Applicants should note that continued funding will be subject to the achievement of the corresponding milestones.

Before applying, you must contact the GOSH and ICH joint research office (Grants.Advice@gosh.nhs.uk) and the GOSH Charity Grant Funding Team (grants@gosh.org) to register your interest and receive advice on the eligibility of your project.

One-to-one pre-application sessions with a representative from LifeArc and GOSH Charity are available to provide support to applicants about their proposed applications to the scheme. Please contact the grants team for more information.

This is a two-stage application process:

1) Applicants are required to submit an outline application form through the charity’s online application portal which will be reviewed by GOSH Charity’s Research Assessment Panel.

2) Successful applicants will then be invited to submit a full application which will undergo external peer review and further review by the Research Assessment Panel.

LifeArc is a self-funded medical research charity with a focus on translation - advancing promising research into health care treatments or diagnostics to benefit health. The charity has a 25-year legacy of collaborating with scientists on diagnostics and therapies, enhancing and protecting innovation and advancing promising research. LifeArc reinvests any income it generates into furthering medical research to improve the lives of patients.

As funders, we have signed a cross-funder statement coordinated by the Academy of Medical Sciences, on the COVID-19 institutional memory: how we as funders will look to fairly remember and recognise the impacts of COVID-19 on grant applicants' work in the future.

As part of this statement, we would like to reassure our research community that we are aware of the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on research activities. Any disruptions to research activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be taken into consideration by our panels and committees when assessing an individual applicant’s record of outputs, research achievements, and career progression in future grant rounds. Read the Covid-19 Statement here.

If you would like to know more about the funding call, please do not hesitate to email the GOSH Charity Grants team.