Engineering Biology Collaborative R&D: Round 3

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £8.5 million to develop and scale Engineering Biology platforms, products and services. This funding is part of UKRI’s Engineering Biology Programme.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £8.5 million from the UKRI’s Engineering Biology Programme. The funding total is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.

The aim of this competition is to deliver business led research and development that will:

• lead to new engineering biology products, processes or services
• de-risk the adoption of new engineering biology technologies that offer high market potential

Your project must focus on developing or applying engineering biology solutions to one or more of the following themes:

• Health
• Agriculture and Food
• Chemicals and materials
• Low Carbon fuels
• Waste and environment
• Cross cutting technology, service development

Projects must be collaborative, business-led, and involve at least one UK SME.

You must address supply chain validation through involvement of at least one named end user in the project, for example, an OEM, Tier 1, or other organisation further downstream in the supply chain. We are particularly interested in projects that address well defined engineering biology scale up constraints and market led capability gaps, and which can demonstrate how the proposed innovation will create growth and value in the UK.

Our experience from similar competitions suggests that you could have up to a 20% chance of success.

If your project is not yet ready to involve an end user but is looking to scale up or validate at scale, you may be eligible for the Engineering Biology Access to Infrastructure Pilot competition, which is open until 21 October 2026, with eligible costs of £250k-£700k for scale up and validation projects.

Scope

To be considered within scope for this competition, the primary innovation and competitive advantage underpinning the project must arise from or enable engineering biology.

For the purposes of this competitions engineering biology is defined as the purposeful engineering of biological systems. These will create new or enhanced functions that do not occur naturally, or that cannot be achieved efficiently through conventional approaches. This includes the design, modification or creation of organisms, cells, genetic circuits, enzymes, proteins or other biomolecular systems that exhibit novel or enhanced functionality.

Your solution can focus on one or more of the following technologies in which the core innovation is in engineered biological systems, for example, built on synthetic biology techniques:

• Biosensors and Diagnostics
• Biomanufacturing Systems
• Biocatalysis and Chemical Production
• Engineered Biomaterials
• Metabolic Engineering
• Nucleotide synthesis
• Engineered Proteins and Enzymes
• Cell and Microbe Engineering
• Synthetic Biology Platforms
• Gene Editing and Genome Engineering
• AI and Computational Biology

Your project must:

• demonstrate how you will address a real commercialisation constraint in the UK and focus on applying engineering biology solutions to one or more cross cutting engineering biology technologies, products or services
• apply engineering biology solutions to one or more of the UKRI’s Engineering Biology Priority Programme themes
• be collaborative industrial research
• focus on solutions that are either new or not yet widely used
• demonstrate how your innovation relates to engineering biology
• explain how your innovation fits with one or more of the specific themes for the competition
• address supply chain validation through involvement of at least one named end user in the project, for example, an OEM, Tier 1, or other organisation further downstream in the supply chain

Dates and more information

• Competition opens: Tuesday 8 September 2026
• Competition closes: Tuesday 3 November 2026 11:00am

You can find full information about eligibility and scope on the Government’s Funding Service website.

You can see other open funding calls in our Funding Finder.