Technology Strategy Board offer £5M for projects to commercialise genomics

Funding opportunity

The UK Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £5 million in genomics research and development projects that take advantage of the opportunities created by the decrease in cost and increase in speed of high-throughput sequencing technology, to enable the development of new products and processes.

The ability to access genomic information quickly and cheaply provides opportunities for advances in many areas including; increasing our understanding of healthy and diseased states; improving livestock and crop species by selective breeding; developing novel therapeutics, vaccines and antimicrobials; and refining new or existing enzymatic processes.  

Launching the funding programme, Ian Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, said, “2010 marks the ten-year anniversary of the release of the draft sequence of the full human genome.  The intervening period has seen amazing technological advances in this field creating new opportunities for business. […] The challenge for UK business is to capitalise on the opportunities provided by these technological advances.”

The competition opens on 12 October 2010. Expressions of interest in applying for funding must be submitted by 18 November 2010. The deadline for the receipt of full applications is 19 January 2011. All projects must be led by businesses.

For further information about the Genomes UK: Exploiting the Potential of High-Throughput Sequencing competition please visit: http://www.innovateuk.org/_assets/pdf/competition-documents/briefs/tsb_genomesuk-explotingpotentalhighsequencingcomp.pdf