UKRI Translation: MRC Proof of Concept: Stage One

The Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is accepting stage one applications for its current translational funding opportunity. The opportunity is now titled UKRI Translation: MRC Proof of Concept: stage one. UKRI states that it was previously titled “Developmental pathway funding scheme: stage one,” so this page keeps the original file identity while pointing readers to the current application page.

The current stage one round closes on 18 November 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. This is an open opportunity, not an archive entry. The wider MRC translational scheme is ongoing and has recurring outline deadlines, but the live Funding Service opportunity still has a defined closing date. MRC will not accept an application after that time, so applicants should also allow for their organisation’s internal research-office deadline.

What the opportunity supports

MRC Proof of Concept is for academically led translational projects that move a credible intervention or research tool toward patient benefit. The project may address prevention, diagnosis, prognosis or treatment of a significant health need. All human diseases and medical interventions are eligible, including work aimed at global health needs as well as UK healthcare.

The project can begin or end at any point from early prototype development through pre-clinical refinement and testing to early-phase clinical studies and trials up to phase 2a. Applicants must provide sufficient proof-of-concept data for the proposed approach. The fund is therefore aimed at a defined development question, not at open-ended discovery work. A proposal should make clear what is already known, what translational risk remains, and what evidence the requested project will generate to support the next decision.

Supported areas listed by MRC include:

• candidate therapeutic entities, including drug discovery
• vaccines for infectious or non-infectious disease
• biologics such as antibodies, peptides and proteins
• advanced therapeutics, including gene therapy and cell therapy
• regenerative medicine approaches
• medicines repurposing where clinical or pre-clinical work is needed for regulatory purposes
• medical devices, medical imaging technology and surgical techniques or tools
• digital healthcare and app development
• diagnostics, biomarker validation and clinical decision-making tools
• behavioural and psychological interventions
• radiotherapy and radiation protocols

The project must have a medical or clinical development plan. MRC does not support fundamental or investigative research that is not linked to such a plan, technology development without a relevant medical pathway, studies whose main purpose is disease-mechanism investigation, or late-phase clinical trials. It also excludes work aimed mainly at improving health-service delivery and population-level or societal solutions that do not address a specific clinical need.

Funding and eligible costs

There is no funding limit for this opportunity. The requested resources must be justified in relation to the work proposed, its duration and its development milestones. The previous page’s indicative £200,000 to £2 million range is not stated on the current UKRI opportunity page and should not be used as a planning rule.

MRC will fund 80% of the full economic cost, with 100% of permitted exceptions. The award can include a contribution to the project lead’s and project co-leads’ salaries, research and technical staff, consumables, equipment, travel, data preservation and sharing, dissemination, estates, indirect costs, and public partnerships including payments to public contributors. The current guidance also permits eligible costs for work undertaken at international organisations by international project co-leads. For international applicants from high-income countries, India and China, those costs must not exceed 30% of the total resources requested; there is no equivalent cap for international applicants from countries on the OECD Development Assistance Committee list.

MRC will not fund PhD studentships, publication costs, bridge funding between grants, or costs associated with applying for intellectual-property protection such as patent filing. Institutions hosting the project lead, co-leads or other staff do not have to provide matched funding beyond the standard 20% of full economic cost. Third-party partner contributions in cash or in kind are encouraged, but the project must remain academically led and require MRC support for the work described.

There is no fixed project-duration limit. Applicants must justify the timescale against the proposed work. MRC says projects should start one to six months after the funding decision date. A useful budget is therefore one that follows the evidence plan: staff and facilities should be tied to tasks, the requested equipment should be necessary for the development work, and each major cost should help answer a translational question or reach a defined milestone.

Eligibility

The project lead must be employed by an eligible research organisation, direct the project and be actively engaged in the work. Only the lead research organisation can submit the application to UKRI. If the lead is based at an NHS organisation, the organisation should be checked in the Funding Service early because it may need additional setup before submission.

Businesses and ordinary charity or third-sector organisations cannot apply as the project lead. Charities and third-sector organisations that are approved UKRI Independent Research Organisations are an exception. A project lead cannot be based at an international research organisation, although international researchers can apply as project co-lead (international) when they make a major intellectual contribution and the collaboration’s added value is explained and justified. Other international collaborators, and UK partners outside approved eligible organisations, should be included as project partners.

MRC encourages charity and industry collaboration where it adds expertise, technology, reagents or funding, but collaboration is not mandatory. Project partners can contribute staff time, equipment, facilities, data, software, materials, participant recruitment or samples such as human tissue. Each partner must provide a statement of support. An individual in the application core team cannot also be a project partner, and an organisation employing a core-team member cannot be listed as that person’s project partner organisation.

Demand management applies: an applicant can submit only one application as project lead to this funding opportunity. For the same project, MRC permits at most two stage one applications only where it has invited a resubmission after an unsuccessful first application. A new and substantially different project is not treated as a resubmission, but applicants should leave enough time to address feedback.

What a strong proposal needs to show

The application should connect a real health or clinical need to a credible development plan. Explain the proposed product, intervention, prototype or research tool; identify the translational bottleneck; and show why the proposed work could lead to meaningful health or patient benefit. The opportunity and market response should describe competing or complementary solutions and their status, rather than presenting the idea in isolation.

Proof-of-concept evidence is essential. State what has already been demonstrated and distinguish established results from the work that the grant would fund. The scientific background should explain the current development stage, the limits of the existing evidence and why the next experiments or studies are the right ones. The development plan should connect tasks to milestones, decision points and a route toward patient benefit or another justified next stage.

The UKRI Funding Service asks applicants to describe the capability of the team, intellectual-property management, ethical and responsible research considerations, patient and public involvement, and data management and sharing. The approach should cover the project plan, methodology and experimental design, reproducibility and statistical design, risk management, and any relevant advanced manufacturing requirements. For animal or patient work, explain the choice of model or population, statistical support, possible sources of bias, and how bias will be reduced. For clinical studies, include a credible recruitment and retention approach.

The project plan should identify who is responsible for each task, dependencies between tasks, and at least two specifically timed milestones. MRC expects SMART success criteria and robust “Go or No-go” criteria for those milestones. The plan should also describe the involvement of the research office, translational research office, technology-transfer office or relevant combination. If the project includes cell or gene therapy products, the application must explain and justify the proposed good-practice manufacturing approach at the development stage in question.

How to apply

Applications for this round are made through the UKRI Funding Service. Je-S is not the correct system for this opportunity. Before drafting, the organisation should be registered in the Funding Service and the lead should confirm that the host organisation is available. If an organisation must be added, UKRI advises allowing at least 10 working days for that setup.

Use the Start application link on the official UKRI opportunity page and follow this sequence:

1. Confirm that you are the project lead.
2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account, select the organisation, verify the email address and set a password.
3. Complete the questions in the Funding Service. Answers can be saved and resumed, and any required document upload must follow the service instructions.
4. Review the application in read-only view before sending it to the research office.
5. Send the completed application to the research office for checking. The office may return it for edits.
6. The research office submits the checked application to UKRI.

The stage one application includes a plain-English summary with a 550-word limit, a core-team section and questions covering keywords, related applications where relevant, the opportunity and market, scientific background and current development stage, the development plan and route to patient benefit, team capability, intellectual property, ethical and responsible research, project approach, statistics, risk and data. Read the live question guidance carefully because word limits and required responses are part of the assessment contract. References count within the relevant question’s word count, and hyperlinks should be used only for direct reference information; the application should be self-contained.

If visual material is useful, it must support the answer rather than replace prose. Images need a descriptive caption immediately below them, must be inserted on a new line, and must be smaller than 5MB. UKRI does not permit paragraphs of text, tables or excessive quantities of images as application images. For a project plan, the required Gantt chart must be legible and include tasks, responsibilities where relevant, dependencies, milestones and the associated decision criteria.

MRC must receive the application by 18 November 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. It cannot be submitted after the deadline. Check the host organisation’s internal deadline separately because research-office and finance checks may occur well before the UKRI closing time. After submission, the application cannot be changed. Ethics permissions and regulatory approvals do not have to be in place at submission, but the proposal must show that these issues have been considered; no work requiring approval may begin until the host organisation has obtained the necessary permissions.

Assessment and follow-up

Stage one is assessed by an independent expert panel. Successful applicants are invited to submit a stage two application for further assessment. MRC assesses fit to scope, the opportunity and market, scientific background and current development stage, the development plan and route to patient benefits, the team’s capability, intellectual property, and ethical and responsible research. It also assesses the project plan and milestones, methodology, reproducibility and statistical design, risk management, patient and public involvement, and data management and sharing.

MRC aims to complete the process from stage one submission to stage two decision in approximately 24 weeks. The current UKRI timeline lists a stage one panel meeting on 21 January 2027 and says applicants will be informed of the decision within 10 working days of the panel meeting. Feedback is expected within eight weeks of the panel meeting. If stage one is successful, the applicant is invited to submit to the next stage two round rather than receiving an automatic full award.

Practical preparation checklist

Start by checking organisational eligibility and Funding Service registration. Then define the clinical need and the development stage in one clear paragraph. Assemble the proof-of-concept evidence, map the remaining work into tasks and milestones, and identify the result that would justify continuing, changing direction or stopping. Ask the research office and finance team to test the costing early, and confirm any NHS hosting arrangements before the application is nearly complete.

Bring the relevant specialists into the core team and document the contribution of each partner. For a device, diagnostic, digital intervention or therapeutic, explain the regulatory and implementation route at the level appropriate to the project. For patient, animal or human-tissue work, plan the ethical, recruitment, retention and statistical sections together. For industry involvement, separate the partner’s contribution from the costs MRC is being asked to fund and include the required support information.

Finally, check that every assessment question is answered in the Funding Service, that the summary contains no confidential information, that the project plan has measurable milestones, and that the institutional submission process leaves time before the MRC deadline. The official opportunity page is the source of truth for the current questions, eligibility rules, deadline and Funding Service link: UKRI Translation: MRC Proof of Concept: stage one.

For questions about whether a proposal fits the scheme, UKRI directs applicants to the relevant DPFS programme manager or dpfsanddcs@mrc.ukri.org. For costings and writing support, contact the research office first. The current opportunity is open, but the recurring nature of the wider scheme is not a reason to ignore the current closing date or to submit an application that lacks the proof, development logic and organisational checks MRC requires.