Blood Biomarker Challenge – Call for Research Proposals

This Request for Applications requires the study population to be community-based.

The Lead Applicant and point of contact must be based in a UK academic/research institution. However, the application can include researchers or institutions outside the UK.

The Lead Applicant is expected to have a contract (fixed term or tenure) which covers the proposed duration of the grant. The proposal must include an early career researcher, in any role. Post-doctoral fellows are eligible to apply as a Lead Applicant, but must collaborate with an administrative Co-Applicant who does have a contract until the end of the project. The administrative PI will be responsible for assisting in providing all institutional documents required for the project and will be required to sign any award contract. Training or mentoring-only proposals will not be considered.

The proposal must include multiple study sites across the UK, with at least one of them having access to specialist techniques with link to other validated measures of underlying pathology, such as CSF or PET.

The team or collaborators must have a track record of community engagement and diverse recruitment in similar studies. We expect the study to broadly represent the diversity of the UK population.

The following areas of research will be outside of the remit of this funding call:

• Analyses of samples from already-existing cohorts, except for specific subcomponents (e.g. validation against pathology) as the focus of this call is for a new prospective study.
• Early or preliminary studies of novel BBMs. Only BBMs broadly accepted to have reached phase 3 of the biomarker development framework will be considered.
• Development of non-BBMs, such as PET, CSF, digital, etc.