Industry Funding Opportunities
This page contains information about current funding opportunities with Industry. If you are thinking of applying, please read all terms and conditions and feel free to get in touch with the named Oxford contact to talk more about the opportunity. Opportunities are not vetted at the stage of being included on this page. The page is updated on a monthly basis and is not exhaustive.
Evox Rare Disease Grant
Call for Proposals
Evox Therapeutics is a privately held, Oxford-based biotechnology company focused on improving the natural delivery capabilities of exosomes and developing an entirely new class of therapeutics. Evox’s mission is to positively impact human health by creating novel exosome-based therapeutics for the treatment of rare and severe diseases with limited treatment options for patients and their families.
Evox has developed an unparalleled proprietary technology platform, DeliverEXTM, to enable it to modify exosomes, to load drugs into exosomes, and to target the delivery of these exosomes to organs of interest. Evox has successfully demonstrated this capability by delivering drug-loaded exosomes into target organs including the central nervous system and other intractable tissues. Exosome-based therapeutics have the potential to address some of the limitations of protein, antibody, and nucleic acid-based therapies by enabling delivery to cells and tissues that are currently out of reach using other drug modalities. Evox is leading the development within this emerging space and the company is poised to break new ground in the treatment of severe rare genetic disorders using its innovative exosome therapeutics.
We have partnered with Evox to call for proposals that will exploit this innovative technology using novel in vivo or in vitro models. Areas of key strategic importance to Evox are rare diseases of the CNS, liver and muscle and the development of targeted therapeutics to treat them. Exploratory studies in other areas will be considered, and studies that investigate the immunological response to exosome therapeutics may also be in scope.
Projects can be up to two years in duration and up to a value of £150,000. Please note that project teams will be required to provide mid-term and final reports.
Eligibility and How to apply
Applications are invited from principal investigators and postdocs with a letter of support from their Head of Department.
Deadlines
Friday 29 January, 5pm
Mid February - Panel review meeting
Late February - Decisions to applicants
Contact
Applications must also be accompanied by Departmental costing and should be sent to Martin Kerr martin.kerr@medsci.ox.ac.uk.
Telephone: 01865 289 542
Asahi Kasei Open Innovation Call
New drug seeds (drug target and drug candidate) in the core research fields of Asahi Kasei Pharma:
- Neurodegenerative disease
- Autoimmune disease
- Critical care medicine
- Bone and/or Cartilage disease
- Muscle-related disease
Deadline
25 February 2021
Full details
The full details are available on the Asahi Kasei website.
Contact
The Business Partnerships Office contact is Siobhan Dennis:siobhan.dennis@medsci.ox.ac.uk
Pfizer- Rolling call for proposals
Pfizer pre-clinical collaborating core research focus areas: oncology, inflammation & immunology, internal medicine and rare diseases.
Non-confidential pre-proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Opportunities related to DNA Damage Response and Replicative Stress such as:
- Chromatin and DNA damage response modulators in the context of nuclear or spatial organization (e.g. biochemical condensates)
- Novel targets identified via synthetic lethal, chemical biology or other approaches, including DNA repair enzymes (esp. nucleases), scaffolding factors and nucleic acid targets (R-loops, G-quadruplexes)
- DNA damage proteins associated with diseases such as cancer and repeat expansion diseases
Out-of-scope: cell therapies, antibody-drug conjugates, nucleic acid therapeutics
Opportunities that address the cause or treatment of Repeat Expansion Diseases, such as:
- Therapeutic targeting of the mutant gene
- Interventions that halt or reverse the somatic expansion of the repeating DNA sequences
- Novel mechanisms that modulate or regulate the pathological repeat
- Genetic modifiers of repeat instability or repeat contraction
Out-of-scope: therapeutic approaches that target/clear protein aggregates
Opportunities to target Cellular Senescence, including senolytic and senomomorphic approaches such as:
- Induction or targeting of senescent-like arrest of tumor cells to overcome drug resistance and/or improve immune response to solid tumors
- Novel senescence targets related to fibrosis, specifically mechanisms responsible for modulating fibroblasts/myofibroblasts function and tissue remodeling by stem/tissue progenitor cells
- Targeting of senescence pathways in tissue resident immune cells in the liver, lung, skin, joints, and gastrointestinal tract that contribute to disease
Out-of-scope: telomeres/telomerase targeting approaches, age-related dysfunction
Opportunities related to Tissue-Immune System Crosstalk in disease pathology including:
- Targets/pathways that induce immune tolerance by modulation of unique or accessory regulatory cells including macrophages (Mregs), B cells (Bregs), and tolerogenic dendritic cells (tolDCs)
- Novel inflammatory pathways/targets in tissue-resident innate, parenchymal, and stromal cell populations including fibroblasts, stem/tissue progenitors, neutrophils and macrophages
Out-of-scope: cell and gene therapies
Deadline
Rolling deadline - Pfizer will review opportunities for early discovery science proposals ad hoc. Please get in touch if you would like to learn more.
Contact
The Business Partnerships Office contact is Martin Kerr: martin.kerr@medsci.ox.ac.uk