MRC Biomedical Catalyst: Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS) outline, 2020

DPFS is an ongoing scheme, with outline deadlines every 4 months.

The DPFS scheme is a key part of our Translational Research Strategy and supports the translation of fundamental discoveries toward benefits to human health. It funds the pre-clinical development and early clinical testing of novel therapeutics, devices and diagnostics, including “repurposing” of existing therapies.

Remit

The scheme supports academically led projects whose goals are to improve prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment of significant health needs, or that focus on developing research tools that increase the efficiency of developing interventions.

Projects supported by the scheme have up to four clearly defined milestones, outcomes and future plans. These help to maximise both the chance of success and the likelihood of the project attracting the downstream funding, from public or private sources, required to meet its clinical and commercial aims. The funding panels assessing the project will, if necessary, help to develop proposals and suggest enhancements.

The following activities are eligible for support:

• Developing candidate therapeutic entities (e.g. drug discovery)
• Pre-clinical testing of novel therapeutic entities
• Early-phase clinical studies of novel therapeutic entities (phases 1 and 2)
• “Repurposing” clinical studies – using existing therapies for new indications
• Developing and testing novel devices
• Developing and testing diagnostics (including biomarker validation)

Individual projects can start and finish at any point along the translational pathway but would not typically progress from initial development through to phase 2 clinical testing in a single application. Where there is a justified need for continued MRC support, sequential applications are encouraged.

All disease areas (including those relevant to global health) and modalities of intervention are eligible for support from the scheme, including small molecules, peptides, antibodies, vaccines, regenerative medicine, cell and gene therapy, devices, surgical techniques and psychological approaches.

Funding to support projects whose goals are to provide the evidence needed to submit a mature, substantial, request to develop regenerative medicine therapies is available through the Regenerative Medicine Research Committee and should be directed to that scheme.

The following activities are ineligible for support:

• Fundamental or investigative research not linked to a development plan (supported by the Research Boards
• Clinical studies where the primary purpose is to investigate disease mechanism (supported by the Research Boards
• Late-phase clinical trials (supported by the MRC-NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation Programme and the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme)
• Late-phase global health trials (supported by the Global Health Trials Programme and the Joint Global Health Trials Scheme).

To find out more, or to apply, visit the call webpage.