Cancer Immunotherapy Response Research Platform

Cancer Immunotherapy Response Research Platform is sponsored by Medical Research Council (MRC). This funding opportunity supports the development of a broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform capable of generating insights into patient response, adverse effects, and resistance to immunotherapy.

Cancer Immunotherapy Response Research Platform – UKRI Funding opportunity: Cancer Immunotherapy Response Research Platform Medical Research Council (MRC) 25 January 2024 9:00am UK time 9 May 2024 4:00pm UK time Apply for funding to develop a broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform capable of generating insights into patient response, adverse effects, and resistance to immunotherapy, and exemplar project(s) to demonstrate utility.

The platform will be led by a multi-organisational and multidisciplinary consortium, including at least one industry partner. A total of £9 million (80% Full Economic cost (FEC) including relevant indexing) over four years is available with £4 million in FY 2024/25. You must be a researcher employed at a research organisation eligible to apply for Medical Research Council (MRC) funding.

The start application link will be available to select from 9:00am 25 January 2024. Projects must start by 1 August 2024 Before applying for funding, check the Eligibility of your organisation . For full details, visit Eligibility as an individual .

To be eligible to apply for this funding opportunity you must: be a researcher employed by an eligible research organisation show that you will direct the project and be actively engaged in the work bring together a consortium to deliver a broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform capable of generating insights into patient response, adverse effects, and resistance to immunotherapy, and exemplar project(s) to demonstrate utility of this platform For applicants who do not have a contract of employment for the duration of the proposed project, by submitting an application the research organisation is confirming, if it is successful: contracts will be extended beyond the end date of the project all necessary support for the project and the applicants will be provided, including mentorship and career development for early career researchers International project co-leads are allowed if they provide expertise or access to facilities or resources not available in the UK.

Equality, diversity and inclusion We are committed to achieving equality of opportunity for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers. We support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances.

This includes: support for people with caring responsibilities alternative working patterns Find out more about equality, diversity and inclusion at UKRI . This funding opportunity will support the development of a consortium based, broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform, capable of generating breakthrough insights into patient response, adverse effects, and resistance to immunotherapy.

In addition to creating a platform, funding should also be used to support an exemplar project or projects seeking to identify marker signatures predicting response or non-response, resistance or toxicity in a defined patient population and therapeutic modality combination. This initiative aims to develop a broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform comprising of equipment, staff and expertise.

The platform will unlock insight into mechanisms and markers of response, adverse effects, and loss of response in cancer immune based therapies (including small molecule, antibody, cell based or vaccine therapy). In addition, funding will support delivery of an exemplar research project (or projects) to establish the utility of the platform and generate early data.

Collectively, the establishment of the platform and exemplar project(s) will leave a legacy of equipment, expertise, know how and data to support future research into immunotherapy response.

Broadly, the long-term ambitions for the platform are: generation of actionable molecular insights to inform patient selection and monitoring to improve the accessibility and appropriate use of approved immune based cancer therapies in clinical practice. generation of transferable mechanistic insights and diagnostic approaches with the potential to unlock a new generation of immunotherapy R&D and research investment in the UK.

This could include identification of new immunotherapeutic targets and mechanistically driven combination therapy approaches, as well as informing patient selection for clinical trials of emerging immune based cancer therapeutics.

The £9 million award will support a single consortium to develop a sustainable, broad utility platform that can provide deep phenotyping and genotyping capabilities to deliver actionable insights around patient response and adverse reactions to cancer based immune therapies.

The consortium will be led by a multi organisational team of academic experts, incorporating representation from key centres across the UK, and include at least one industry collaborator. Bids must describe how the research platform will be embedded in an NHS environment involving appropriate high volume patient hospitals, along with details on sample acquisition, analytical infrastructure and practices, and data capabilities.

You should detail how the platform will be of ongoing and broad utility beyond the exemplar projects or projects included in the award; how the platform, its analytic equipment and expertise, will serve and be made available to the wider cancer immunotherapy research community across both academia and industry, in order to work towards patient benefit.

Exemplar research projects To demonstrate utility of the platform, you will be asked to define and justify an exemplar project or small number of projects to investigate, and to define biomarker signatures predictive of, response, adverse events and resistance to, or resistance to immune based cancer therapies in a defined patient population about to receive a particular immunotherapy (either in clinical practice or trial settings).

You should provide a compelling rationale for the exemplar projects or project, defining and justifying the cancer type or types and immunotherapeutic modality or modalities to be studied. The duration of this award is four years. Projects must start by 1 August 2024.

A total of £9 million (80% FEC including relevant indexing) over four years is available. We expect to fund a single consortium. The expected spend profile of this funding allows for spend of £4 million (funders contribution) in FY 2024/25 with £5 million (funders contribution) spread evenly during the remainder of the grant.

Committing less than £4 million (funders contribution) in FY 2024/25 will lead to a corresponding reduction in the total award. Capital equipment is eligible for support.

You can request funding for: interdisciplinary multi organisational applications extending access and use of existing hubs of state of the art equipment and build upon them capital equipment purchase such as: digital pathology equipment technical staff (lab, analytic or data) project management and consumables associated with the creation of the platform and delivery of one or more exemplar projects You can also request costs for work to be undertaken at international organisations by international project co-leads.

We will fund 100% of the full economic cost. The total of such costs requested for international applicants from developed countries (those not on the OECD DAC List of ODA Recipients ), India and China must not exceed 30% of the total resources requested. There is no cap on costs requested for international applicants from DAC list countries.

For more information on international costs and what we will and will not fund see costs we fund – overseas costs and the Collaborate with Researchers in Norway guidance .

fees or stipends for postgraduate studentships siloed projects that lack interdisciplinary integration, perspectives or approaches projects that do not embed the research and innovation community in the process consortia that do not include at least one industry partner applications which seek to deliver a research programme, but do not aim to leave a legacy platform with an accompanying plan for how it will attract and deliver further research Supporting skills and talent We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment .

International collaboration UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary.

Our TR&I principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration. As such, by applying for UKRI funding, you may be asked to demonstrate how your proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.

If your application includes international applicants, project partners or collaborators, visit UKRI’s trusted research and innovation for more information on effective international collaboration. Find out about getting funding for international collaboration . We are running this funding opportunity on the new UKRI Funding Service.

You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system. The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application. If the lead research organisation is an NHS organisation, check it is available in the Funding Service.

You are encouraged to check this early as there may be additional steps for the organisation to be set up before you can apply. Only the lead research organisation can submit an application to UKRI. Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page.

Confirm you are the project lead. Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. Answer questions directly in the text boxes.

You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.

Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office. Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.

Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.

Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant: use images sparingly and only to convey important information that cannot easily be put into words insert each new image onto a new line provide a descriptive legend for each image immediately underneath it (this counts towards your word limit) files must be smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format Watch our research office webinars about the new Funding Service .

For more guidance on the Funding Service, see: how applicants use the Funding Service how research offices use the Funding Service how reviewers use the Funding Service We must receive your application by 9 May 2024 at 4. 00pm UK time. You will not be able to apply after this time.

Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal organisational deadlines. Following the submission of your application to the funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and applications will not be returned for amendment. If your application does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected.

MRC, as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications. We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our privacy notice .

MRC, as part of UKRI, will need to share the application and any personal information that it contains with co-funder Office of Life Sciences (OLS), so that they can participate in the assessment process. For more information on how OLS uses personal information, visit DHSC privacy notice . If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the UKRI Gateway to Research .

In plain English, provide a summary we can use to identify the most suitable experts to assess your application.

We may make this summary publicly available on external-facing websites, so make it suitable for a variety of readers, for example: the wider research community Guidance for writing a summary Clearly describe your proposed work in terms of: the challenge the project addresses potential applications and benefits List the key members of your team and assign them roles from the following: project co-lead (UK) (PcL) project co-lead (international) (PcL (I)) professional enabling staff research and innovation associate Only list one individual as project lead.

Find out more about UKRI’s core team roles in funding applications . What is the opportunity or challenge, you are seeking to address?

What the assessors are looking for in your response the health or clinical need you are seeking to address how your work could lead to the development of a new or improved prototype, product, service or technology how meeting this need could significantly reduce disease burden or alleviate an important bottleneck the competing solutions and their status, including whether similar or complementary research is being taken elsewhere the key competitive advantages of your proposed solution the potential market for your proposed solution What are you hoping to achieve with your proposed work?

What the assessors are looking for in your response Explain how your proposed work: is of excellent quality and importance within or beyond the fields or areas has the potential to advance current understanding, or generate new knowledge, thinking or discovery within or beyond the field or area is timely given current trends, context, and needs impacts world-leading research, society, the economy, or the environment Within the Vision section we also expect you to: identify the potential direct or indirect benefits and who the beneficiaries might be identify potential improvements in human or population health, whether through contributing to relieving disease or disability burden, improving quality of life or providing benefit to the health service or health-related industry show how your programme fits within the MRC strategy and the difference it will make describe the route to patient benefit explain how the results will provide mechanistic insights into disease and if the results will be valuable for discovery science through ‘reverse translation’ brings together and builds on UK cancer immunotherapy and wider life sciences expertise will enhance and complement the existing landscape be of international importance You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.

Further details are provided in the Funding Service. How are you going to deliver your proposed work?

What the assessors are looking for in your response Explain how you have designed your work so that it: is effective and appropriate to achieve your objectives is feasible, and comprehensively identifies any risks to delivery and how they will be managed if applicable, uses a clear and transparent methodology if applicable, summarises the previous work and describes how this will be built upon and progressed will maximise translation of outputs into outcomes and impacts describes how your, and if applicable your team’s, research environment (in terms of the place, and relevance to the project) will contribute to the success of the work Within the approach section demonstrate how you will support the development of a consortium based a broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform capable of: generating insights into patient response resistance to immunotherapy mechanistic insights into disease Within the approach section we also expect you to: describe how the consortium brings together different multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise as well as geographic spread, including industry members describe plans for sustainability and legacy beyond the end of UKRI funding – these could include cost recovery models, securing additional funding, development or expansion after the initial period of funding provide details of governance (proportionate to the scale and complexity of the activity); including external advisory structures if needed plans for support and maintenance of the proposed infrastructure details of access and usage particularly where a culture of equipment sharing may extend use provide detail on training and development of staff Demonstrate that your proposed approach is feasible, and comprehensively identify any risks to delivery and how they will be managed, including: How likely the risks are to occur.

What their impact would be on the success and deliverability of the project. Your risk mitigation strategy, giving particular consideration to any potential safety risks and how these risks will be controlled. Your option to include a risk table to support your response.

Ensure you describe how the idea or solution has been developed to date and what the proposed approach for further development is.

the previous work and current status of the innovation or technology and how the proposed work will build upon and progress its development the key gap that the project’s primary objective is seeking to address the critical data to be generated as the project endpoint that will maximise translation of outcomes and transform the chance of attracting onward investment the expertise or any consultancy required to deliver the proposed work Provide a project plan to support your application and information on how the proposed work has a reliable and robust methodology and experimental design.

Provide a summary of the project workplan, accompanied by an embedded Gantt chart or similar aide to support your application. This should outline: project specific deliverables, including proposed success criteria the resourcing necessary to deliver the proposed work the overall timeframe of the project Do not use the project plan to include information which should be detailed in the other sections of your application.

Ensure that you describe the methodology and experimental design.

This should include: the use of animals or patients, including justification for why particular animal models or clinical populations have been chosen and any considerations given to diversity any consultation with a statistician or methodology hub to the development of the application the access you will have to statistical support during the project the statistical analysis plans, the proposed sample sizes in sufficient detail for the replication of any power calculation the anticipated effect of sizes and variability potential sources of bias and describe the strategies that will be adopted to minimise their effects As part of your methodology, describe the nature of human participation in your proposed work, including: the characteristics of the participants (such as age, disease) and the rationale for their selection the specific population groups in relation to their diversity characteristics and the proposed analysis, following the MRC embedding diversity in research design policy target and acceptable levels of participant recruitment across the project timeline evidence of recruitment feasibility the human participant recruitment strategy, including the steps that will be taken if patient recruitment does not reach the set targets provide the name of any required approving body and whether approval is already in place if applicable, provide details of how any limited animal, library specimen or isolate cell work will inform the human-centric proposed work.

For any research involving animals and tissues and cells, you must show how you will use both sexes.

If you are not proposing to do this, a strong justification is required Within the Approach section, we also expect you to describe your exemplar projects or projects specifically: provide details on the proposed methodology and experimental design, including: the experiments you will undertake to probe the stated hypothesis the data you will collect and how it will test the hypothesis the proposed study design and why this approach is appropriate to meet the study objectives Please refer to the MRC guidance for applicants, section 2.

2. 3. 5 ‘Reproducibility and statistical design’ , for further information.

Use the ‘Research involving the use of animals’ section to provide information on the rationale for using animals, choice of species, welfare and procedure severity. The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research have developed a free online tool to guide researchers through the design of their experiments.

It helps to ensure that researchers use the minimum number of animals consistent with their scientific objectives, methods to reduce subjective bias, and appropriate statistical analysis. You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Provide details of your project milestones. What the assessors are looking for in your response Provide at least two key progression milestones for your project, that: delineate the proposed work into costed project phases with clear Go/No-Go decision points establish key progression milestones with target and acceptable thresholds Download and complete the following Experimental Medicine milestone template (DOCX, 61.

7KB) and copy and paste into the text box.

Milestones must be SMART – that is: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-framed: detail robust Go / No-Go criteria (failure to meet these will result in early termination of the project) for all projects, it is advisable to structure the project so that the critical questions are addressed as early as possible in the plan Success criteria should be based on project outputs that, at the given point, need to be achieved in order to justify further continuation of the studies.

Success criteria should align to project aims and objectives; success criteria for the final milestone should reflect what success for the funded aspect of the project would equate to.

For each success criterion, please specify a quantified target value that you will seek to attain and a quantified acceptable value, which, if achieved, would support project progression For exemplar projects, this should include a summary of: Do not include project management meetings or other process-related tasks as milestone success criteria.

Your estimate of the milestone criteria being met should assume that the preceding milestone was achieved. For the final milestone, the criteria should reflect outcomes representing successful completion of the project. Applicant and team capability to deliver Why are you the right individual or team to successfully deliver the proposed work?

What the assessors are looking for in your response Evidence of how you, and if relevant your team, have: the relevant experience (appropriate to career stage) to deliver the proposed work the right balance of skills and expertise to cover the proposed work the appropriate leadership and management skills to deliver the work and your approach to develop others contributed to developing a positive research environment and wider community You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.

Further details are provided in the service. The word count for this section is 1,500 words: 1,000 words to be used for R4RI modules and, if necessary, a further 500 words for Additions.

Use the Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI) format to showcase the range of relevant skills you and, if relevant, your team (project and project co-leads, researchers, technicians, specialists, partners and so on) have and how this will help deliver the proposed work. You can include individuals’ specific achievements but only choose past contributions that best evidence their ability to deliver this work.

Complete this section using the R4RI module headings listed. Use each heading once and include a response for the whole team, see the UKRI guidance on R4RI .

You should consider how to balance your answer, and emphasise where appropriate the key skills each team member brings: contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge the development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships contributions to the wider research and innovation community contributions to broader research or innovation users and audiences and towards wider societal benefit Provide any further details relevant to your application.

This section is optional and can be up to 500 words. You should not use it to describe additional skills, experiences, or outputs, but you can use it to describe any factors that provide context for the rest of your R4RI (for example, details of career breaks if you wish to disclose them). Complete this as a narrative.

Do not format it like a CV. For full details, see Eligibility as an individual . List the references you have used to support your application.

What the assessors are looking for in your response Include all references in this section, not in the rest of the application questions. You should not include any other information in this section. We advise you not to include hyperlinks, as assessors are not obliged to access the information they lead to or consider it in their assessment of your application.

If linking to web resources, to maintain the information’s integrity, include persistent identifiers (such as digital object identifiers) where possible. You must not include links to web resources to extend your application. Add details about any project partners’ contributions.

If there are no project partners, you can indicate this on the Funding Service. A project partner is a collaborating organisation who will have an integral role in the proposed research, for example a charity partner or, if applicable, a supplier of the project intervention. Project partners do not include project co-leads.

This may include direct (cash) or indirect (in-kind) contributions such as expertise, staff time or use of facilities. Important note: If your application includes industry project partners, you will also need to complete the Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF) section. Find out more about ICF .

You must ensure that any third party individual or organisation you include within the Funding Service as a project partner, also provides you with a supporting email or letter of support (see next section ‘Project partners: letters (or emails) of support’).

The individual (including their organisation) named as the project partner contact, cannot also be included within your application as an applicant, such as project lead or any other core team role . You cannot include a different department based within the same organisation as a member of your core team, as a project partner.

Add the following project partner details: the organisation name (searchable via a drop-down list or enter the organisation’s details manually, as applicable) the project partner contact name and email address the type of contribution (direct or in-direct) and its monetary value If there are specific circumstances where project partners do require funding for minor costs such as travel and subsistence (these project partner costs should be claimed and justified within the resources and costs section of your application).

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made. If an individual or organisation outside the core team is responsible for recruitment of people as research participants or providing human tissue for this project, list them as a project partner.

Important information when completing the project partners section within the Funding Service When completing your application in the Funding Service, if you discover that you have entered project partner information incorrectly and you have saved the entry, you should remove the specific project partner record and re-add it with the correct information.

Project partners: letters (or emails) of support Upload a single PDF containing the letters or emails of support from each partner you named in the Project partner section. If you do not have any project partners, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

What supporting statements we are looking for Important note: We are only looking for you to provide letters or emails of support from the following: a third party organisation You must ensure that any third party project partners providing a supporting document, are also added to the ‘project partners’ section within the Funding Service.

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made. What supporting statements we are not looking for We are not looking for you to provide any supporting emails or letters related to any individual or organisation already included within your application (this includes other departments within the same organisation).

Any individual or organisation included in your application with a core team role cannot also be a project partner. Check the funding opportunity specific roles available in the core team section for the definitive list.

Do not include any additional documents, email communications or any other type of information we have not requested, including supporting statements (letters or emails), simply expressing supportive opinions (we only expect to see emails or letters of support from third party project partners uploaded to this section). If you include any information not requested by us your application will be rejected.

Supporting document guidance for third party project partners Each third party project partner supporting letter or email you provide, should: be no more than two A4 pages confirm the partner’s commitment to the project clearly explain the value, relevance, and possible benefits of the work to them describe any additional value that they bring to the project include the name of the project partner organisation and contact information (this should match the partner contact and organisation name details you must add to the separate ‘project partners’ application section) Project partners letters and emails of support are not required to be on headed paper or include handwritten signatures (electronic signatures are acceptable from the nominated partner contact).

Project partner responsibility for the recruitment of people If the project partner is responsible for the recruitment of people as research participants or providing human tissue their email or letter of support should include: agreement that the project partner will recruit the participants or provide tissue confirmation that what is being supplied is suitable for the proposed work confirmation that the quantity of tissue being supplied is suitable, but not excessive for achieving meaningful results (if applicable) Multiple project partners If you have multiple project partners, you should: ensure each separate email or letter of support, does not exceed two pages of A4 consolidate all the supporting documents provided by each project partner into a single PDF file before uploading ensure the PDF does not exceed the maximum file size of 8MB For the file name, use the unique Funding Service number the system gives you when you create an application, followed by the words ‘Project partner’.

The Funding Service will provide document upload details when you apply. Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF) Does your application include industry project partners? What the assessors are looking for in your response If industry collaboration does not apply to any of your project partners,