Contracts for Innovation: industrial human relevant drug models

Key Features

Organisations can apply for a share of £2 million, inclusive of VAT, to develop and commercialise non‑animal methods for assessing the pre‑clinical pharmacokinetics and cardiovascular safety of new medicines.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £2 million

Opens: 2nd Mar 2026

Closes: 15th Apr 2026

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Grant Overview

Innovate UK will invest a minimum of £2 million in this Contracts for Innovation competition.

Grant Scope

The competition aims to support organisations developing disruptive and innovative alternatives for improved pharmacokinetic and cardiac safety studies to:

  • Improve applicability in drug development settings
  • Further qualify methods towards broad adoption

Projects must focus on developing new or existing approaches that can be deployed within a drug development setting, enabling progress towards government targets of:

  • More than 35% reduction in dedicated PK studies using dogs or non-human primates
  • More than 50% reduction in dedicated cardiovascular safety studies using dogs or non-human primates by 2030

It is a two-phase competition, with contracts only being awarded for Phase 1. You must define your goals in your application and outline plans for phase 2.

You must demonstrate how the proposed work will establish feasibility and lay groundwork for achieving these outcomes in Phase 2.

The 2 research categories are:

Phase 1: Technical feasibility studies

Phase 2: Prototype development and evaluation

Your project can focus on one of more of the following specific themes:

  • Pharmacokinetic Studies
  • Cardiovascular safety

Eligibility Criteria

Projects must have total costs of no more than £200,000 and last between 6 and 9 months. Projects must start by 1st July 2026 and end by 31st March 2027.

Projects can not start until your contract has been approved by Innovate UK.

  • Lead: Organisations can be a business of any size based in the EU, EEA or Internationally. You can work alone or with subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations or third-party sectors.

Exclusions

The following projects are excluded from funding:

  • Not original in scope or duplicates someone else’s work
  • Generates novel in vivo data
  • Focuses solely on refinement of in vivo models
  • Does not intend to exploit primary outputs in the UK
  • Directly duplicates other UK Government or EU funded initiatives already funded to delver
  • Covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver proposed solutions

Funding Costs

Up to £2 million in grant funding has been allocated to fund innovation projects in Phase 1. Contracts will be up to £200,000 for each project up to 9 months. Innovate UK are funding up to 12 projects.

Up to £6 million is expected to be allocated to Phase 2. Contracts of up to £1.5 million may be awarded to further develop your technology.

You must select whether you are VAT registered before entering eligible project costs.

If you select you are VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT. Your total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT must not exceed £200,000.

If you are not VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and no VAT will be added. Total project costs must not exceed £200,000.

Research and Development

Applications must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services. R&D can include prototyping and field-testing the product or service.

R&D does not include:

  • Commercial development activities
  • Supply to establish commercial viability or recover R&D costs
  • Incremental adaptations, customisation, integration or improvements to existing products or processes.

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

Full competition details

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Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.