Advancing innovation in accelerated cancer diagnosis
Advancing innovation in accelerated cancer diagnosis supports collaborative teams developing and validating diagnostic technologies to enable earlier cancer detection, particularly for less common cancers.
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Funder: UK Research and Innovation
Due Dates: October 28, 2026, 11:00am UK time (Final submission) | December 7, 2026 (Interview invitations) | January 11–15, 2027 (Interviews) | January 21, 2027 (Notification) | April 1, 2027 (Project start) | March 31, 2030 (Latest project end)
Funding Amounts: Up to £25.4 million total fund; £1.5 million–£4 million eligible project costs; 24–36 months
Summary: Supports collaborative clinical validation and evaluation of early cancer diagnostic technologies, particularly for less common cancers.
Key Information: Collaborations must include a UK-registered SME claiming funding and a practising clinician, clinical academic, or clinical delivery team.
Description
Innovate UK delivers this competition on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences’ Cancer Healthcare Goals programme. It funds collaborative research and development to accelerate earlier cancer detection and diagnosis. Projects must develop, validate or evaluate diagnostic technologies or approaches with clear potential for clinical and health economic impact, including evidence supporting regulatory approval and future NHS adoption.
Supported work can include clinical validation studies, early-phase clinical trials, safety and efficacy testing, technology demonstrations, regulatory planning and product development. Themes include next-generation diagnostics, technologies improving patient access to diagnostic services, and multimodal cancer-risk assessment. Less common cancers are particularly encouraged: cancers other than breast, prostate, lung and bowel cancer, including rare forms of those four types.
