The aim of the Wellcome Trust’s Translation Awards is to develop innovative and ground breaking new technologies in the biomedical area. Concept notes are due April 15; preliminary applications are due June 13.

Proposals are welcome from academic and commercial organizations based in the UK and overseas. Projects must have already demonstrated proof of principle, supported by experimental data. Applications should bridge the funding gap in the commercialization of new technologies in the biomedical area and must plan to take the product, technology or intervention to a stage at which it is sufficiently developed to be attractive to another party.

Translation Awards are designed to be flexible, enabling freedom to innovate and push the boundaries of current knowledge. Their aim is to support individuals or teams through larger and bolder awards to accelerate product development. The Translation Fund will consider applications that are either single projects or portfolio programs.

To encourage more applications in underserved and challenging areas, the fund will have strategic highlight areas. However, projects covering any aspect of technology development from a range of disciplines—including physical, computational and life sciences—will be considered at any time. Projects must address an unmet need in health care or in applied medical research, offer a potential new solution, and have a realistic expectation that the innovation will be developed further by the market.

The Trust will normally actively participate in the stewardship of the project and lead on intellectual property management and exploitation.