New £1 Million Fund for Translational Research of Rare Diseases in Children

Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH) and LifeArc are co-funding a new £1million grant programme to support translational research at GOSH focused on addressing medical needs for rare disease patients.

The Translational Research Accelerator Grant invites proposals for translational, milestone-driven projects 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 projects on the translational pathway with the expectation that researchers will continue to develop the subject of their research after GOSH charity/LifeArc funding has ended, either by securing further funding from external translational schemes or partnering with/ licensing to industry.

Activities eligible for support include:

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, including small molecules, peptides, antibodies, vaccines, regenerative medicine, cell and gene therapy, devices, surgical techniques and psychological approaches.

Projects must be led by research active professionals based at GOSH or the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. Collaborations with industry and other academic partners are encouraged where relevant to the project. There is no set upper limit on grant awards, however it is anticipated that the £1 million grant fund will be allocated to a small number of high-quality applications.

Applicants must first submit an outline application using the online application portal on the GOSH website by the deadline on 14 April 2021 (noon).

Successful applicants at the outline stage will then be invited to submit a full proposal.

GOSH and LifeArc are also holding pre-application sessions to advise potential applicants, and are hosting a webinar on 25 February 2021 to support those submitting an outline application.

More information about this research funding opportunity and the application process is available on the RESEARCHconnect funding information platform. RESEARCHconnect provides up-to-the minute content, insight and analysis on research funding news and policy. To find out more about how RESEARCHconnect can keep you in the know, and subscription fees, contact us today.