Wellcome Trust Innovator Awards

Wellcome Trust Innovator Awards

Category of Opportunity: 
Project

These awards support researchers who are transforming great ideas into healthcare innovations that could have a significant impact on human health.
Individuals and teams from not-for-profit and commercial organisations can apply.
Organisations can be of any size, based anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China).
Funded organisations must sign up to our grant conditions (see the template award letters in the 'How to apply' section on this page).
You can work in any scientific discipline, including a discipline outside life sciences. You can work on any type of technology. Examples of technologies include:
therapeutics (small molecules or biologics)
vaccines
devices
diagnostics
digital technologies
regenerative medicine.
The work that you propose must be essential for developing your healthcare innovation.
Multidisciplinary collaborations and partnerships

We particularly encourage proposals from multidisciplinary collaborations within or between organisations. These collaborations do not need to include life sciences researchers.
In your proposal, you must:
include researchers from at least two different scientific disciplines
include at least one researcher from a discipline outside life sciences, such as (but not limited to) engineering, physical science or data science
describe the added value of the collaboration, and tell us why the outcome(s) of your work will be unique and only achievable through this approach.
We also encourage partnerships between not-for-profit and commercial organisations. We expect most commercial organisations that partner not-for-profit organisations to provide in-kind contributions in addition to Wellcome’s funding.
If your proposal is successful and involves collaborators or partnerships, you must all enter into an agreement stating:
who will own any IP that arises from this award
the necessary background IP licences
how you plan to protect, maintain and commercialise Wellcome-funded IP.
This agreement has to be in place before we will provide funding.
This agreement must be consistent with the template award letter for your organisation (see the 'How to apply' section on this page).
For guidance, read the university and business collaboration agreements: model heads of terms agreements (opens in a new tab) on GOV.UK.
Your proposal

In your proposal, you should describe:
the global burden of the disease or condition that you want to address
the unmet healthcare need
the patient population that you want to reach and the impact that your healthcare innovation could have on their health
why your healthcare innovation will be significantly better than anything that’s already available or being developed
the evidence supporting your proof of concept
what you will do with our funding (eg key experiments and project deliverables) to move your project on to the next stage of development
your team's expertise and the resources available to you
your long-term aims beyond this award.
Past and current innovations award holders

If you’re one of our past or current innovations award holders, you can apply for an Innovator Award if you propose to develop a healthcare innovation that we haven't funded.
Who can't apply
You're not eligible for an Innovator Award if your company is not established and/or doesn't have working capital.
We won't consider proposals for:
incremental improvements in healthcare
‘blue skies’ or curiosity-driven research
back-up or me-too drugs
research about the distribution and uptake of healthcare innovations
delivering health services
public health interventions
one-off costs that don’t include key experiments, such as manufacturing a drug substance.
We don't usually consider proposals for phase III or IV clinical trials for therapeutics or vaccines. If you're proposing this kind of trial, please contact us. We’ll tell you if we want you to apply.

Deadline: 
Other
Application Deadline: 
Rolling