Contracts for Innovation: industrial human relevant drug models

Overview

Innovate UK is investing up to £2 million in Phase 1 of this Contracts for Innovation competition to support disruptive and innovative alternatives to animal use in pharmacokinetic (PK) and cardiovascular (CV) safety studies.

Delivered under the Alternative Industrialised Models for ethical Drug Discovery (AIM) programme and in partnership with NC3Rs, this competition supports the UK Government’s Replacing animals in science strategy.

The focus is on R&D services that improve predictive capacity, robustness and deployability of in vitro and in silico models in drug development settings. Projects must demonstrate feasibility and lay the foundation for broader adoption or further development in a potential Phase 2.

This competition is procurement-based and run under the Procurement Act 2023 R&D exemption. It is not subject to subsidy control rules.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to support organisations developing disruptive and innovative alternatives for improved pharmacokinetic (PK) and cardiac safety studies to:

• further qualify the methods towards broad adoption

• or improve their applicability in a drug development setting

Projects must focus on developing new approaches or further developing existing approaches that can be deployed within a drug development setting. It must enable progress towards the government targets of:

• more than 35% reduction in dedicated PK studies using dogs or non-human primates (NHPs)

• more than 50% reduction in dedicated cardiovascular safety studies using dogs or NHPs by 2030

This is a two phase competition, with contracts awarded only for Phase 1. Applicants must define your goals in your application and provide an outline of your plan for phase 2.

Phase 1 must demonstrate how the proposed work will establish feasibility and lay the groundwork for achieving these outcomes in Phase 2.

Ultimately, applicants are expected to deliver a model that aims to meet the accuracy, cost and throughput requirements to credibly replace equivalent in vivo models.

Applicants must demonstrate a practical and credible route to market supported by a clear commercialisation plan and include plans to achieve regulatory engagement where required.

This competition supports the delivery of the UK Government’s Replacing animals in science strategy.

Key themes and topics

Projects may focus on one or more of the following areas:

Pharmacokinetic studies

• improving the predictive capacity of artificial intelligence or machine learning (AI or ML) assisted pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) prediction models

• increasing the exposure capabilities of in vitro models for the generation of PK or PD data

• improved and increased use of existing PK or PD data to better inform modelling approaches and increase their scope

• demonstrating combinatorial in vitro or in silico approaches to reduce the numbers of animals used in dedicated PK studies

• Cardiovascular safety

• improve the robustness and reproducibility of existing in vitro assays in the generation of cardiovascular (CV) safety data

• improve the predictive capacity of in silico cardiac safety models

• improve the accuracy, reliability of combinatorial in silico and in vitro cardiovascular safety assays

• address current unmet needs in cardiovascular safety with the novel generation or application of alternative approaches

• demonstrate the integration of alternatives into a standardised framework for cardiovascular safety that can be readily deployed across industry R&D

• the focus can be on early screening or in-depth mechanistic toxicity studies

Project duration

Projects must:

• start by 1 July 2026

• end by 31 March 2027

• last between six and nine months

Award value

Projects must have total costs of no more than £200,000, inclusive of VAT

Funding rates

100% funded 

Eligibility criteria

• Projects must be led by an organisation of any size, including those based in the EU, EEA or internationally 

• Contracts will be awarded to a single entity only 

• Subcontractors can be used for specialist skills and can be businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector(charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups) 

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

• If you are VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT must not exceed £100,000 

• If you are not VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total project costs must not exceed £100,000 

• You must intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service.