Do you have an exciting early-stage medical research project with the potential to make a positive impact on Covid-19 patients or help manage future viral outbreaks?
If so, we can help.
Advise & Connect can help your project move closer to patients, by providing access to our expertise, our wider network of partners and collaborators and potentially an Innovation Award of up to £20,000.
Advise & Connect is open to projects that could help tackle the long-term health challenges of Covid-19 and prepare for future viral outbreaks, focusing on four specific areas: drugs, diagnostics, devices and AI/digital health.
What will the service provide?
We will provide our specialist advice for free, tailored to your needs, without any obligation. The advice will be provided by our research scientists and our technology transfer and commercialisation teams who have a strong track record of successfully progressing innovative science to benefit patients. We might also draw on the expertise of external partners who have agreed to lend their support to Advise & Connect.
Applicants who receive advice may also be put in contact with other experts from our wider network or invited to apply to our Innovation Award scheme. Innovation Awards of up to £20,000 can be used to validate or de-risk a technology, to establish market need or feasibility and to develop or test prototypes.
How will applicants benefit from Advise & Connect?
LifeArc is uniquely positioned at the interface of academia and industry with over 25 years of experience of collaborating with academics, SMEs and industry to turn early innovations into benefits for patients. We have encountered and overcome many of the obstacles and challenges that may block your path when progressing your project. Advice will be tailored to your project and delivered by professionals drawn from across LifeArc, ranging from our scientists to business development, legal and investment professionals.
Advise & Connect offers applicants the possibility to benefit not only from LifeArc’s experience in translating early-stage science but also to explore additional support from LifeArc and our partners such as further collaborative and funding opportunities (please click here to find out more).
We want Advise & Connect to be a useful resource to complement and enhance existing support available from your institution or other resources. This is why advice applicants receive through Advise & Connect comes with no strings attached. There will be no obligation for further engagement with LifeArc and our partners. In addition, any rights arising from work carried out under an Innovation Award will be owned by the awardee and there is no expectation of any revenue sharing with LifeArc.
Advice we can give you:
- Assessing the scientific rationale for the project and its commercial potential
- Intellectual property strategy
- Development plans and funding
- Technical challenges and feasibility (e.g. drug discovery, access to libraries, antibody engineering)
- Partnering with industry
- Commercialisation and marketing strategies
- Commercial contracts and agreements guidance
Please note, we cannot provide legal advice, nor give recommendations on the patentability of your technology, intellectual property protection, market access or freedom-to-operate issues. In addition, while we cannot advise you on the technicalities of regulatory approval and clinical development, we can provide broad insights as well as guide you in obtaining such advice.
Challenges your project should address:
- Long term health effects of Covid-19
- Supporting clinical decision making in Covid-19 treatment and management
- Disruptive approaches to fast-tracking antiviral therapeutics and diagnostics development
- Viral disease control and monitoring