This call will provide funding for validation activities for novel targets with a clear therapeutic concept and strong biological rationale related to early intervention in anxiety, depression and/or psychosis.
This call will provide funding for validation activities for novel targets with a clear therapeutic concept and strong biological rationale related to early intervention in anxiety, depression and/or psychosis. Funded proposals will generate data supporting the target’s therapeutic potential in the development of new and improved pharmacological treatments.
Full details of this award will be published the week commencing 10 February 2025. Sign up to our Research Update newsletter to be notified when the full details of this call are posted.
Join our funding webinar on 25 February 2025, 13:00 GMT to learn more about this award and how to apply.
You can apply to this call if you are a team of researchers:
- from disciplines relevant to drug discovery and mental health science, including but not limited to genomics, computational psychiatry, molecular biology in psychiatry, medical chemistry, neuropharmacology, in-vitro/vivo/silico pharmacology and drug discovery
- from an eligible organisation based anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China)
We encourage applications from teams that:
- are diverse and interdisciplinary, within one or across multiple institutions, with collaborations covering multiple areas of expertise
- include researchers at any stage of their career
The administering organisation is where the lead applicant is based. It is responsible for submitting your final application to Wellcome and managing the finances of the grant if it is awarded.
The administering organisation can be based anywhere in the world apart from mainland China. It must be able to sign up to Wellcome’s grant conditions.
Your organisation can be a:
- higher education institution
- research institute
- non-academic healthcare organisation
- not-for-profit or non-governmental research organisation
Commercial organisations are not eligible to apply as administering organisations for this call. However, commercial organisations can be added as consultants (service providers) or collaborators.
This call aims to support research activities to validate novel targets that have a clear therapeutic concept, a strong biological rationale and relevance to early intervention in anxiety, depression and/or psychosis. Successful projects will generate data demonstrating the target’s potential to lead to a clinical benefit, including toxicity risk considerations, and will develop the potential for a drug discovery campaign. Early elimination of non-viable targets is also important to better inform future research hypotheses and experimental designs.
We define a ‘target’ as a biochemical entity in the body that a drug can bind to, including but not limited to:
- receptors
- proteins
- enzymes
- biomolecules (for example, DNA, RNA, peptides)
- gut microbiome
Target validation must demonstrate that a target is directly involved in a pathophysiological process that leads to the emergence of symptoms. The modulation of the target can also produce a change in the biological pathway and possible clinical efficacy.
Up to £700,000 per project
Up to 2 years