Rosetrees Seedcorn Awards

Rosetrees Seedcorn Awards is sponsored by Rosetrees Trust. Seedcorn awards help researchers generate high-quality preliminary data for innovative and novel ideas related to the prevention, diagnosis, and/or treatment of human diseases. Applicants are expected to have a novel hypothesis and some preliminary data.

Seedcorn Awards - Rosetrees Trust Rosetrees Seedcorn Awards Seedcorn awards help researchers to generate high-quality preliminary data to advance innovative and novel ideas with the potential to transform the prevention, diagnosis and/or treatment of human diseases. We are looking for impactful, ‘out-of-the-box' ideas. Applicants should have a novel and innovative hypothesis and some preliminary data that can be developed further.

We prioritise exciting ideas with the greatest potential to secure further funding and grants. We will consider both pre-clinical and clinical research studies. At the end of the funding period, continuation funding may be available for successful projects.

Is your research focused on sepsis? We are delighted to announce that this year, we are teaming up with the charity Sepsis Research FEAT again to fund selected innovative projects that tackle unmet clinical needs in sepsis. Click this link to find out about Sepsis Research FEAT 10 research priorities.

Please note: We continue to welcome applications from all areas of biomedical research, alongside this year's focus on sepsis. Does your research accelerate the development of new treatments for human disease through the adoption of human-specific research?

We are delighted to announce that this year, we are teaming up with the Centre for Human Specific Research to fund innovative human-focused research projects that are centred on human cells, tissues, or data, and conducted without the use of any animal-derived products. Please note: Applications for all other research areas are still very welcome in this round.

While we are partnering this year with Sepsis Research FEAT and the Centre for Human Specific Research to encourage applications in these priority areas, we continue to warmly welcome high-quality proposals across the full remit of the Seedcorn Award.

Funding of up to £20,000 for 12 months for Preclinical Studies or 18 months for Clinical Studies Monday 20th April 2026 (4pm) Seedcorn awards provide £20K funding over 12 months for preclinical studies and over 18 months for clinical studies. Funding is flexible and can be used to fund researcher salaries, research consumables and other related research costs.

If you are applying for additional funding from other sources, we will only release our funding on receiving confirmation that the additional funding has been secured. Please note that Seedcorn funding cannot be used to fund the stipend or consumables for PhD studentships. All applicants must confirm that they are fully funded for the duration of the research project.

We will fund: Salaries of the Researchers (directly incurred costs only), Consumables of the project, Other project running costs, Purchases of small benchtop equipment and Patient travel expenses. We will not fund: Directly allocated salary costs (e.g. PI time), Overheads, Large equipment or capital spending, Conference Travel & Accommodation, Technology transfer fees or Tuition fees.

Please note: If you are applying for the maximum £20k fund there needs to be thorough justification of all costs. These grants are designed to pump-prime early stage research to generate preliminary data that can be put towards future funding proposals. We are keen to support innovative and novel ideas related to prevention, diagnosis and/or treatment of human diseases.

We encourage applications with ‘out-of-the-box’, potentially transformative ideas. Applicants are expected to have a novel and innovative hypothesis and some preliminary data that can be developed further. We will prioritise funding of applications that we believe have the greatest potential to secure further funding and grants.

We will consider both pre-clinical and clinical research studies. We will consider applications from first-time or more junior principal applicants, however, we recommend that a more experience co-applicant is included as part of the team. For all applications, the principal applicant must confirm that they will be employed at the host institution for the duration of the project.

All applications will be initially checked for eligibility. An initial triage by an internal scientific panel will select the best applications that will be taken forward. Triage will be based on the scientific quality, clinical need, track record of research team, innovation and potential for further development and clinical translation.

The best scored applications will be shortlisted and considered by a scientific panel who will make funding recommendations. The final funding decision will be subject to internal approval. Prior to contacting us please see our FAQs page.

For further general enquiries regarding eligibility and the application process, please contact Richard Miller ( rmiller@rosetrees. org. uk ).

All applications to Rosetrees are made through Flexigrant.