Funding Directory

The WCRF Regular Grant Programme supports innovative research on how diet, nutrition, body composition, and physical activity influence cancer prevention and survivorship. Applicants must be senior researchers with a PhD, based at eligible institutions outside the Americas, focusing on investigator-initiated or pilot feasibility studies.

World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) International funds innovative research on cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship. Through the INSPIRE Research Challenge, it supports early-career investigators exploring modifiable factors like diet, activity, environment, stress, sleep, and immunity, aiming to advance understanding and reduce cancer risk through impactful lifestyle-related discoveries.

The RNID Innovation Seed Fund Grants support early-stage, high-risk research into hearing loss, tinnitus, and related conditions. Funding is available for novel basic or translational projects, including proof-of-concept and pre-clinical studies. Proposals must show potential to benefit people with hearing-related conditions and strengthen competitiveness for future funding.

Gateway for Cancer Research is a non-profit organisation funding Phase I and II clinical trials for all cancer types and stages. It supports patient-focused, treatment-based research with potential to transform standards of care. Priority areas include immunotherapy, gene therapy, targeted treatments, predictive biomarkers, and integrative medicine, aiming to improve patient outcomes.

The Wellcome Mental Health Award: Transforming Early Intervention funds research on scalable interventions for young people with anxiety, depression, or psychosis. It offers a £200,000 Foundation Phase (12 months) to develop proposals, followed by a £5–8 million Impact Phase (up to five years) to implement and evaluate effective, feasible, and sustainable projects.

The MRC’s Developmental Pathway Gap Fund (DPGF) supports early-stage, high-risk translational projects for new or repurposed medical interventions. It bridges initial ideas and larger funding by generating key data to de-risk development. Projects must focus on a single critical step and aim to address any human disease, globally or in the UK.

Prostate Cancer Research (PCR) is offering two seed grants to advance prostate cancer research. The Collaborative Seed Grant funds early-stage, partnership-driven projects to boost innovation and research capacity. The PPI Seed Grant supports activities that meaningfully involve patients, ensuring research remains relevant, impactful, and shaped by lived experience.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) supports pilot studies exploring the biological and genetic causes of cancer health disparities. Funding is available for mechanistic research, new models and methods, and secondary data analysis. The NOFO also aims to build a national network of researchers in this field and expand key resources like biospecimens and patient-derived models. Early-stage projects that lay the groundwork for future in-depth studies are encouraged.

HTA call 2025/367 invites proposals to evaluate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of an intervention training older adults to stand up after a fall, compared to usual care. Falls often lead to long-lies, causing serious health impacts and high NHS costs. The study aims to improve outcomes and reduce healthcare burden.

HTA call 2025/318 invites proposals to evaluate the social and mental wellbeing benefits of intergenerational practices in care homes and schools. With rising loneliness in both older adults and young people, this study aims to assess how structured, intergenerational group activities impact mental health, reduce isolation, and improve caregiver outcomes.

HTA call 2025/318 invites proposals to evaluate the social and mental wellbeing benefits of intergenerational practices in care homes and schools. With rising global ageing and loneliness, this study aims to explore how structured intergenerational programmes can improve wellbeing for older adults, children, and caregivers through shared group activities.

Heart Research UK (HRUK) supports the promotion of medical research into cardiovascular disease and related disorders, the prevention, treatment and cures for cardiovascular conditions and the dissemination of information.
Spark Grants helps researchers generate data to de-risk projects and strengthen future funding applications. Suitable projects include: Testing new hypotheses and collecting preliminary data. Demonstrating proof-of-principle to support translational steps after basic research.

Sigma Theta Tau International Honour Society of Nursing - known as Sigma - is an international representative body for nurses and nursing. Its mission is to advance world health and celebrate nursing excellence in scholarship, leadership and service, and to respond to trends and issues in nursing and healthcare. The Sigma/Council for Advancement of Nursing Science (CANS) grant encourages qualified nurses to improve global health through research. Proposals for clinical, educational or historical research, including plans for broadly disseminating the research findings, may be submitted for the grant.

The NIHR Public Health Research Programme invites applications to develop dynamic models assessing public policies on e-cigarette and tobacco use. Research should evaluate effects of pricing, regulation, marketing, and quitting support on different populations and health inequalities. Economic evaluation, stakeholder involvement, and knowledge mobilisation are essential.

The Better Methods, Better Research (BMBR) Programme, jointly run by NIHR and MRC, funds research to improve methodologies across biomedical, health, and social care fields. It supports generalisable, evidence-based methods with clear end-user engagement, aiming to enhance best practice, inform policy, and ensure impactful, sustainable improvements in health research.

The NIHR i4i Product Development Awards fund collaborative research on medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health technologies that address health or social care needs. Projects must have at least proof-of-concept (TRL 3) and aim to de-risk innovations through development and real-world evaluation, accelerating adoption and attracting further funding or investment.

The CRUK Prevention and Population Projects Awards provide support for high quality, hypothesis-driven research in primary prevention and population research, including prevention interventional studies. The awards are a maximum of £500,000 over three years to fund research with clear objectives that aims to answer key questions and advance understanding of cancer prevention and how cancer affects the population.

The Nature Awards Healthspan Accelerator, in partnership with Voyager, helps researchers turn discoveries into real-world healthspan solutions. In 2025, it focuses on metabolism, senescent cells, neurodegeneration, and inflammation. Priorities include therapies, devices, and tools that improve ageing biomarkers, metabolic health, and cognition. Validated solutions are especially encouraged.

This NIHR Public Health Research funding call is seeking a single UK-based research consortium to explore how local climate change adaptation efforts affect health and health inequalities. With up to £2.5 million available over 3–5 years, the funded work will evaluate local government-led interventions (excluding health sector-specific actions) and generate evidence, best-practice recommendations, and real-world solutions. The goal is to support effective, inclusive climate adaptation that addresses the wider determinants of health and reduces health disparities.

PHR Call 2025/340 invites a single research consortium to conduct a 3–5 year programme evaluating the impact of local climate change adaptation on health and health inequalities. Backed by NIHR’s focus on climate, health, and sustainability, the research will assess how local and regional government actions to adapt to climate risks affect population health, particularly in vulnerable communities. The programme should generate real-world, scalable solutions and best-practice recommendations to support equitable local adaptation. Multidisciplinary UK-based consortia can apply for up to £2.5 million, with a two-stage application process via NIHR’s online system.

The NIHR is funding a multicentre cluster randomised trial (£1,996,829; Jan 2024–May 2027) to evaluate a primary care training and support programme for the secondary prevention of domestic violence and abuse. The study will assess the intervention’s effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, providing robust evidence to inform responses to serious violence.

The NIHR Public Health Research (PHR) Rapid Funding Scheme supports urgent, small-scale baseline data collection or feasibility studies for non-NHS public health interventions. Aimed at time-sensitive opportunities like natural experiments, projects must demonstrate urgency, align with PHR goals, and lead to a full evaluation proposal with potential to inform public health policy.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports discrete, well-defined projects in any area of cancer research using the National Institutes of Health R03 small grant mechanism. The National Institutes of Health R03 small grant mechanism supports discrete, well-defined projects that realistically can be completed in two years and that require limited levels of funding. Examples of the types of projects that the R03 grant mechanism include, but are not limited to, the following:  Pilot or feasibility studies.Secondary analysis of existing data.Small, self-contained research projects.Development of research methodology.Development of new research technology.

The NIHR HTA Call 2025/375 invites proposals evaluating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of ambulance service led interventions. Areas of interest include pain management, falls, mental health, infection control, palliative care, maternity, and safe non-conveyance. Studies must focus on patient-centred outcomes, not service delivery or implementation issues.

The NIHR HTA Call 2025/375 invites proposals evaluating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of ambulance service led interventions, including those delivered by air ambulance teams. Interventions should be managed by professionals such as paramedics or urgent care clinicians, with applications encouraged across a wide range of urgent, emergency, and critical care settings.

Funding for high-quality applied health and social care research to increase and improve the evidence base about early action and prevention with health and social care services. Improving the population's health, either by preventing illness or identifying the cause of ill health at an early stage, is a key focus to reducing health inequalities and is at the heart of the NHS Long Term Plan.

The Dame Josephine Barnes Bursary from POGP supports educational and research efforts in pelvic, obstetric, and gynaecological physiotherapy. It can fund courses, international travel to promote women’s health, or serve as seed funding for Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) in research. Open to UK-based applicants and international initiatives.

Friends for an Earlier Breast Cancer Test (Earlier.org) is a US-based non-profit organisation, established in 1995, that is dedicated exclusively to funding research focused on developing innovative methods for the earlier detection of breast cancer. Its mission is to support the creation of a biological test capable of identifying breast cancer at its earliest stages, potentially even before a tumour has formed. Earlier.org provides funding to support pilot projects that explore new techniques for early breast cancer detection. Grants are intended to provide preliminary data that can lead to more substantial peer-reviewed funding.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) invites mechanistic research that aims to understand how and why expectancy effects occur in a cancer context, elucidate their role in cancer symptom management, and identify patients, symptoms, cancer sites and contexts in which expectancy effects can be leveraged to improve cancer outcomes. Expectancies are defined in this context as beliefs about future outcomes, including one's response to cancer or cancer treatment. Expectancies can be evoked by social, psychological, environmental and systemic factors. Expectancy effects are the cognitive, behavioural and biological outcomes caused by expectancies. Expectancy effects can be generated by expectancies held by patients, clinicians, family members, caregivers and/or dyadic/social networks.

Wellcome's Doctoral Programmes for Healthcare Professionals initiative funds doctoral programmes to deliver outstanding training in discovery research to registered healthcare professionals in the UK.

The Oxford–Harrington Rare Disease Scholar Award supports UK-based researchers advancing rare disease discoveries towards clinical impact. Scholars receive £100,000, tailored drug development expertise, and project support. Offered by the Oxford–Harrington Rare Disease Centre, the award also provides access to further funding while allowing researchers to retain full intellectual property rights.

This opportunity is provided by the Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre (OHC), a partnership between the University of Oxford and Harrington Discovery Institute to advance promising discoveries from academic labs to move them into clinical practice. The award combines funding and expert therapeutics development support to help researchers in the UK, US, or Canada to accelerate preclinical projects towards treatments for patients.

The NIHR Work and Health Research Awards fund large, cross-disciplinary projects tackling key issues like long-term conditions, disability, sickness absence, COVID-19 impact, workforce mental health, and health inequalities. Aimed at improving employment and health outcomes, proposals should involve cross-sector teams, support implementation in systems like ICSs, and deliver public benefit.

The NIHR Work and Health Research Awards support large-scale, ambitious projects addressing key priorities in work and occupational health. Up to £2 million over three years is available for transdisciplinary teams. Applicants should consult the NIHR Work and Health Logic Model to align proposals with the initiative’s short- and long-term aims.

Wellcome's Genomics in Context Awards - Collaborative Research at the Intersection of Genomics, Humanities, Social Sciences and Bioethics scheme will fund transdisciplinary teams to drive research breakthroughs at the crossroads of genomics, humanities, social sciences and bioethics. Supported projects will receive dedicated time and resources to shape fresh research directions and experiment with novel approaches to collaboration. This scheme is expected to open in November 2025.

This initiative encourages applications from organisations operating in Wales that have the potential to increase and sustain co-operation with important international regions. This may include relevant bi-lateral agreements or a relevant and specific Welsh Government strategy.

This NIHR funding supports research into community-based interventions to improve veterans’ mental and physical health. It should address challenges of transition, stigma, and access through population-level approaches such as housing, employment, and coordinated care. Robust outcomes, economic evaluation, and stakeholder engagement are essential to inform policy and enhance holistic care.

This NIHR Public Health Research call invites proposals evaluating public mental health interventions to promote wellbeing or prevent mental ill-health in men. It emphasises a life‑course approach, targets health inequalities, encourages community‑level initiatives, and demands economic evaluation and involvement of people with lived experience.

The Foundation's Conference Awards for Ageing Research support allied health professionals, nurses and pharmacists who are actively involved in ageing-related research and wish to disseminate their findings at national or international conferences. The aim is to support early career researchers who do not have access to conference funds through existing grants or fellowships.

The NIAAA invites applications for research projects focused on closing the treatment gap for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Priorities include improving access, appeal, and implementation of treatments, analysing cost and insurance systems, and addressing health disparities. Projects may span multiple disciplines, with up to five years’ funding.

This funding opportunity supports developing data and metadata standards for wearable technology to improve mental health research. Recipients will collaborate with manufacturers, researchers, and ethics experts to enable data integration, like DICOM for imaging. Funding depends on NIH budgets; projects may last up to four years with no budget cap.

Through this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is inviting research projects that implement early phase (Phase 0, I and II) investigator-initiated clinical trials focused on cancer-targeted diagnostic and therapeutic interventions of direct relevance to the research mission of NCI's Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD) and Office of HIV and AIDS Malignancies (OHAM).  The proposed project must involve at least one clinical trial related to the scientific interests of one or more of the following research programs: Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, Cancer Imaging Program, Cancer Diagnosis Program, Radiation Research Program, Complementary and Alternative Medicine Program, and/or the HIV and AIDS Malignancies Research Programs. 

This funding opportunity supports clinical trials of orphan products (phases 1–3) for rare diseases with unmet medical needs. It aims to evaluate safety and/or efficacy to support new indications or labeling changes, ultimately increasing approved treatments and advancing innovative, collaborative approaches in rare disease drug development.