Advancing innovation in accelerated cancer diagnosis

Key Features

Innovate UK, on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences’ (OLS) Cancer Healthcare Goals programme, will invest up to £25.4 million, to support the clinical validation and evaluation of early cancer diagnostic technologies and devices.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £25.4 million

Opens: 1st Sep 2026

Closes: 28th Oct 2026

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Grant Overview

Innovate UK on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences Cancer Healthcare Goals programme will invest up to £25.4 million in innovative CR&D projects.

Grant Scope

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development of diagnostic innovations that enable the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer, particularly less common cancers.

Projects can focus on one of the following specific themes:

  • Next generation diagnostic technologies and devices
  • Novel technologies and devices which can improve patient access to diagnostic services
  • Harnessing multi-modal approaches

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for this competition, your project must have total project costs of between £1.5 million and £4 million. Projects must start by 1st April 2027 and end by 31st March 2030 lasting between 24 and 26 months.

Lead organisation: To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution or an NHS organisation. The consortium must contain at least one UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise claiming grant funding on this application. Academic institutions cannot work alone.

Project team: To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, public sector organisation, charity, not for profit or research and technology organisation. For this competition, the collaboration must include a practising clinician or clinical academic or involve a clinical delivery team as a minimum.

Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisation that do not claim any funding for work on the project. These costs need to be covered from their own resources and can include UK, EU and other non-UK organisations. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries so long as results are exploited outside the UK.

Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. Overseas subcontractors can be used, but you must state why UK subcontractors could not be used in your application.

Number of applications: An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. Businesses, academic institutions and public sector organisations who are not leading an application can collaborate on any number of applications. Charities and not for profit organisations can collaborate on any number of applications.

Previous applications: Previously submitted applications can be used in this competition.

Grant Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding the following projects:

  • companion diagnostics
  • therapeutics or treatment development
  • discovery research
  • routine deployment of late stage technologies into frontline services
  • technologies focusing on pure service redesign
  • technologies focusing on cancer recurrence detection, monitoring or treatment response prediction

Grant Funding

Innovate UK have allocated up to £25.4 million to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

Under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Route rules, no more than £3 million per enterprise, per project can be awarded in the form of a grant.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For industrial research and experimental development, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

Category 2: Industrial research projects

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

Category 2: Experimental development projects which are nearer to market

Funding available for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 50% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

  • 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are an academic institution

Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding

  1. Research organisations must use the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) method as the Je-S form has now been decommissioned.
  2. We pay 100% of the 80% Full Economic Cost (FEC). On IFS only enter the 80% being claimed.

 

For further information on this competition, please see full details. 

Full competition details