Overview
Innovate UK will invest up to £3 million through this Contracts for Innovation competition, funded through the UKRI Engineering Biology Programme.
The competition is designed to help engineering biology-focused organisations accelerate the development and commercialisation of products, platforms and services that address defined challenges from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
Projects must focus on one of four challenge areas covering water quality monitoring, veterinary vaccines, ecosystem health and resilience, or rapid food diagnostics.
This is phase 1 of a potential two-phase competition. Phase 1 will focus on demonstrating the technical and commercial feasibility of proposed innovations. Only successful phase 1 applicants may be invited to apply to a subsequent phase 2 competition.
Innovate UK expects to award a maximum of 15 contracts.
Scope
The aim of the competition is to enable innovative engineering biology-focused organisations to accelerate the development and commercialisation of products that can address the societal challenges defined by Defra and the FSA:
- low cost, real time water quality monitoring for policy, public health and ecosystem management using genomic monitoring and surveillance
- accelerating next generation veterinary vaccine platforms through engineering biology
- predicting ecosystem health and resilience from eDNA through AI-driven functional genomics
- rapid diagnostics to maintain food standards and regulatory compliance
Projects must demonstrate a credible and practical route to market, and applications must include a plan to commercialise the results.
Applicants must define their goals and outline their plan for phase 1.
At this stage, contracts will only be awarded for phase 1. At the end of phase 1, applicants will be expected to demonstrate the technical and commercial feasibility of their innovation.
In a potential phase 2, successful phase 1 applicants may be invited to continue developing their solution.
The primary innovation and competitive advantage underpinning the project must arise from, or enable, engineering biology.
For this competition, engineering biology is defined as the purposeful engineering of biological systems to create new or enhanced functions that do not occur naturally, or cannot be achieved efficiently through conventional approaches.
This can include the design, modification or creation of organisms, cells, genetic circuits, enzymes, proteins or other biomolecular systems with novel or enhanced functionality.
Elements of project work focused on technology viability or scale-up, such as validation, manufacturing or regulatory progression, can be supported where they are directly enabled by and derive value from the underlying engineering biology innovation.
Key themes and topics
Projects must focus on only one of the following themes:
Low cost, real time water quality monitoring
Projects should support policy, public health and ecosystem management through genomic monitoring and surveillance.
Projects will not fund:
- purchase, installation, validation or deployment of existing water quality monitoring technology without a significant technological innovation component
- projects focused solely on data collection, analysis, modelling, visualisation or reporting without innovation in biological sensing or genomic technologies
Accelerating next generation veterinary vaccine platforms through engineering biology
Projects should support the development of adaptable and scalable veterinary vaccine platforms enabled by engineering biology.
Projects will not fund:
- research focused solely on improving human health and disease burden
- projects with applications across human and animal health where the primary research focus is not animal health
- incremental improvements to existing vaccines that do not substantially improve platform adaptability, vaccine performance, development timelines or manufacturing flexibility
- research focused solely on wildlife or companion animals rather than food-producing animals
- diagnostic, surveillance, therapeutic or other animal health technologies not directly related to veterinary vaccine platform development
- projects focused primarily on late-stage clinical development, commercialisation or deployment of vaccine products
Predicting ecosystem health and resilience from eDNA through AI-driven functional genomics
Projects should use eDNA and AI-driven functional genomics to improve understanding of ecosystem health and resilience.
Projects will not fund:
- projects focused solely on data collection or development of sensing technologies without innovation in analysis, interpretation and reporting
- purchase, installation, validation or deployment of sequencing equipment without innovation in analysis, interpretation and reporting
Rapid diagnostics to maintain food standards and regulatory compliance
Projects should develop innovative engineering biology-enabled diagnostic approaches that support food standards and regulatory compliance.
Projects will not fund:
- purchase, installation, validation or deployment of existing food testing technology without a significant technological innovation component
- taking an established DNA-based detection technology and designing additional tests or assays to run on it
- projects focused solely on data collection or sampling without innovation in detection technologies
Across the competition, projects can focus on technologies including:
- biosensors and diagnostics
- biomanufacturing systems
- biocatalysis and chemical production
- engineered biomaterials
- metabolic engineering
- nucleotide synthesis
- engineered proteins and enzymes
- cell and microbe engineering
- synthetic biology platforms
- gene editing and genome engineering
- AI and computational biology
Projects will not be funded if they:
- are not original in scope and duplicate someone else’s work
- are not engineering biology focused
- are not focused on the competition themes
- involve clinical development of biologics, vaccines or engineering biology-derived small molecules
- involve clinical trials or preclinical evaluation of therapeutics
- are focused on fundamental research
Project duration
9 months
Must start on 1 January 2027
End by 30 September 2027
Award value
Projects can have total costs up to £200,000, inclusive of VAT
Funding rates
100% funded through a procurement contract
At least 50% of the contract value must be attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design.
Eligibility criteria
- Projects must be led by a UK based organisation of any size
- Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only
- Applicants can work alone or use subcontracted skills and expertise from businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector, including charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups
- The majority of the project work and key deliverables must be completed by the applicant and carried out in the UK
- Most of the funding must be spent within the UK
- Subcontractors can be used for specialist skills
- Applicants must select whether they are VAT registered before entering eligible project costs
- VAT-registered applicants must enter eligible project costs exclusive of VAT, with total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT not exceeding £200,000
- Applicants that are not VAT registered must enter eligible project costs exclusive of VAT, with total project costs not exceeding £200,000
- At least 50% of the contract value must be attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services
Contracts for Innovation competitions involve the procurement of R&D services and are not subject to subsidy control criteria. This competition is run under the Procurement Act 2023 R&D exemption.
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