Seeking predictors of vaccine efficacy: identifying correlates of protection to support vaccine development
This one-off funding call will support research teams to establish or validate correlates of protection across 11 diseases with the potential to cause substantial outbreaks or which have significant burden, and have no licenced vaccines. Having a range of reliable metrics to predict vaccine efficacy will support effective vaccine development, especially in low resource settings.
Scheme at a glance
This scheme is now closed
- Lead applicant career stage:
- Administering organisation location:
- Anywhere in the world (apart from mainland China)
- Frequency:
- One-off
- Funding amount:
Up to £5 million
- Funding duration:
Up to 3 years
- Coapplicants:
- Accepted
About this call
Millions of lives are saved each year as a result of vaccination. However, infectious diseases still disproportionately affect those living in parts of Africa and Asia, and we need new vaccines to tackle both endemic and emerging infectious diseases. Wellcome published the effective vaccine ecosystem report [PDF 2.8MB] in 2021, identifying barriers to vaccine development and what drives clinical development decisions at each stage. In order to inform vaccine candidate selection we need to build evidence on protective immunity in vaccine target populations earlier in clinical development.
Traditionally, licenced vaccines undergo testing in randomised controlled trials to determine efficacy against clinical endpoints. Such trials can be costly and take many years to complete. When trials are not feasible, for example when a disease has low or unpredictable incidence, or when very large or complex trials are needed, clinical development can stall. Identification of correlates of protection could significantly reduce cost and time taken to develop vaccines by serving as alternatives to clinical endpoints, informing earlier go/no-go decisions on which products are likely to meet efficacy endpoints, and guiding clinical trial design where efficacy testing would otherwise be unfeasible.
By jointly funding this call, Wellcome and CEPI want to address the barriers currently hampering the discovery and validation of reliable correlates of protection.
At a Wellcome workshop in September 2022, stakeholders, including developers, regulators and policymakers, identified a lack of consistency in data collection, analysis and presentation as barriers, and highlighted an urgent need to standardise approaches to develop robust data sets at earlier stages of development.
With this call, we aim to support coordination and collaboration between stakeholders across vaccine development to generate these robust datasets and expand the list of correlates of protection available for vaccine development. The funded research will generate data packages that can support decision-making in vaccine development, including those needed for licensure.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an international non-profit association, was established to develop vaccines to prevent and respond to future epidemics and to secure access to such products for the populations who need them. CEPI is working to achieve a world where epidemics and pandemics are no longer a threat to humanity, by accelerating development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases with a view to the ultimate licensure of these products and use in an emergency.
Eligibility and suitability
About you
You can apply to this scheme if you are a research team that:
- Demonstrates transdisciplinary expertise in immunology, vaccinology, statistics and data analysis, and experience of preclinical (where relevant) and clinical vaccine development.
- Includes at least one applicant with expertise in biomarker discovery or validation to inform clinical go/no-go decisions (or licensure applications).
- Shows expertise in monitoring vaccine-induced immune responses.
- Is led or co-led by an applicant hosted at an institution in a country affected by one of the diseases in scope. Note that if the proposal has a co-lead, they should be listed as a coapplicant and their role as a co-lead should be stated in the narrative part of the proposal. Only one institution, the administering organisation of the Lead Applicant, will receive funds for onward distribution.
- Can demonstrate commitment to engaging with National Regulatory Authorities to ensure the data you are generating would be considered acceptable as part of a licensure package.
- Can demonstrate commitment to building collaborations with stakeholders within your disease field to agree a consistent approach for data analysis. Demonstration of commitment could include clear, detailed examples of past work, or letters of support.
- If applying for viral diseases, are prepared to consider collaboration and synergies with CEPIs other established network partners (for example, Animal Network or Centralized Network).
- Promotes a diverse, inclusive and supportive research environment.
- Can prove willingness to share samples and assays with collaborating partners. Assays and reagents should be made globally available.
Career stage and experience
Lead applicant
At the point of submitting your application, the lead applicant:
- Can be based anywhere in the world except mainland China, so long as the research team contains a coapplicant based at an institution in a country affected by a disease in scope and is designated as co-lead for the study. If this is not the case, the lead applicant must be based at an institution in a disease-affected country.
- Must be able to contribute at least 20% of their research time to this project.
- Must be based at an eligible administering organisation that can sign up to our standard grant conditions.
- Must perform assays including the use of an International Antigen or Antibody reference standard, where available for a given analyte or pathogen. Data generated in such assays should be made available via publication on Open Access platforms to maximize comparisons against data from other platforms and programs.
- Must be able to demonstrate experience of leading collaborative research programmes involving clinical research and biomarker discovery, and managing a research team appropriate for your career stage. For early-career researchers without such experience, you must have a plan to acquire such experience.
- Must have experience in organising an international collaboration.
- Must demonstrate willingness to share reagents, assays and samples globally (if applicable).
- Must have a permanent, or open-ended, or long-term rolling contract for the duration of the award.
The lead applicant can request salary recovery if this is a condition of their employment contract (unless based in UK or Republic of Ireland). For more information on requesting salary, please see the “What we offer” section.
Coapplicants
Applications can include a maximum of ten coapplicants. At the point of submitting your application, each coapplicant:
- Can be based anywhere in the world except mainland China.
- Must be essential for the delivery of the proposed research and make a significant contribution, for example designing an aspect of the research, writing the application, managing the programme, leading on a specific work package or aim, or being responsible for dissemination of research results.
- Must be able to contribute at least 20% of their research time to this project.
- Does not need to have a permanent, open-ended, or long-term rolling contract at their host institution, however, they must have a guarantee of space from their host institution for the duration of their commitment to the award.
- Must be based at an eligible organisation that can sign up to our grant conditions.
- Can be based in the same or in different organisations, can be at any career stage, and come from any discipline, but the added value of the team approach must be clear.
- Must demonstrate willingness to share reagents, assays and samples globally (if applicable).
- Can request salary recovery if this is a condition of their employment contract. For more information on requesting salary, please see the “What we offer” section.
When research occurs in more than one country, applications must include coapplicants based in each country where the research will take place.
Collaborators
There is no limit to the number of collaborators an application can have but the added value of their participation must be clear.
Time spent away from research and part-time working
You can apply if you've been away from research (for example a career break, maternity leave, or long-term sick leave). We'll allow for this when we consider your application.
Lead and coapplicants can be part-time. There is no formal minimum, but part-time working needs to be compatible with delivering the proposal successfully.
Who can’t apply
You cannot apply if you intend to carry out activities that involve the transfer of grant funds into mainland China. The introduction of the Chinese NGO Law on 1 January 2017 requires foreign NGOs (like Wellcome) to have a representative office in China, or file documentation to carry out temporary activities in order to fund activities in China. Wellcome currently does not have a representative office in China and a temporary activity licence would not cover the nature of the activities we fund. Consequently we (Wellcome) are unable to fund activities in China.
Restrictions if you are applying for or hold other Wellcome awards
You can only be an applicant on a maximum of two applications to this funding call:
- you can only be lead applicant on one application (but can be a coapplicant on one other), or
- you can be a coapplicant on a maximum of two applications.
You must be able to demonstrate that you can dedicate enough time and resources to both projects, if funded.
If you already hold other active awards with Wellcome from previous funding opportunities:
- An early-career researcher can be a lead applicant on one Wellcome award and a coapplicant on one other Wellcome award.
- A mid-career researcher can be a lead applicant on one Wellcome award and a coapplicant on two other Wellcome awards.
- An established researcher can be a lead applicant on two Wellcome awards, one as the sole applicant and one as lead applicant for a team, or both as the lead applicant for a team. They can also be a coapplicant on two other Wellcome awards.
Restrictions if you are applying for or hold other CEPI awards
You can be an applicant to the joint Wellcome-CEPI award if the project in your application is not already funded by CEPI.
What’s expected of the administering organisation
Your administering organisation can be a:
- higher education institution,
- research institute,
- not-for-profit or government body, or
- for-profit organisation.
The lead and coapplicants must all be based at eligible organisations that can sign up to our grant conditions and grant funding policies.
We expect organisations based in the UK to meet the responsibilities required by the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers for institutions, managers and researchers.
Any organisation which receives Wellcome funding that is based outside the UK is expected, at a minimum, to follow the principles of the Concordat.
We also expect your administering organisation to:
- Give you, and any staff employed on the grant, at least ten days a year (pro rata if part-time) to undertake training and continuing professional development in line with the Concordat. This should include the responsible conduct of research, research leadership, people management, diversity and inclusion, and the promotion of a healthy research culture.
- Provide a system of onboarding and planning for you when you start the award, which should include understanding and supporting the commitments of the award.
- Provide you with the status and benefits of other staff of similar seniority.
If your administering organisation receives core funding from Wellcome, this Award should not replace or lead to a reduction in existing or planned core support.
About your proposal
This call is divided into two strands, depending on the disease pathogens studied:
- Part A for bacterial/parasitic diseases or
- Part B for viral-related diseases.
Through Part A, Wellcome will fund research on correlates of protection to support the clinical development or licensure pathway of vaccines against the following diseases:
- Invasive non-typhoidal salmonella, (iNTS),
- Shigella,
- Paratyphi A,
- Extraintestinal pathogenic E coli (ExPec),
- Group A strep, or
- Schistosomiasis.
In addition to the above-mentioned diseases, Wellcome and CEPI will fund research through Part B to discover correlates of protection for diseases caused by the following viruses:
- Ebola virus (non-Zaire forms),
- Lassa virus,
- Marburg virus,
- Nipah virus
- Rift Valley Fever virus.
Analysis approaches must be applied to generate harmonised data from relevant samples sets. The samples included may cover:
- preclinical samples
- clinical samples (including from Human Infection Studies)
- samples from endemic (disease affected) regions
Sample sets can contain samples from both infected and uninfected individuals and/or from both surviving and non-surviving individuals.
Your programme must aim to analyse biomarker data in the context of a human vaccine programme.
Proposals may include analysis of existing samples, or collection of new samples as part of a planned or ongoing funded clinical study. Please note the call will not fund the conduct of new clinical trials or clinical studies, with the exception of new studies using established, characterised Human Infection Studies.
Successful applications will form part of an actively managed portfolio.
Proposals must:
- Seek to discover, establish and/or validate a correlate of protection that will inform decision-making in vaccine development for one of the target diseases listed.
- Provide a strategic concept of how the study will generate data using standardised approaches (sampling techniques, assays and data analysis methods), that will be powered to meet statistical criteria.
- Propose a methodology strategy:
- with the aim to harmonize the data sets,
- that can be integrated into a data package for regulators, and
- that is applicable in vaccine target populations in disease affected regions.
- Include data generated in relevant vaccine target populations. The proposed programme must include samples from study participants based in disease-affected countries.
- Include a strategic concept for how the biomarker data will be used to advance clinical development and licensure.
- Use existing international reference standards in assays where available.
- Make generated protocols, reagents, standards and assays, openly available.
Proposals can:
- include more than one immune biomarker to harmonize and validate
- include innovative techniques and technologies.
- include the generation of standardised reference reagents where relevant
- use samples from any human study design suitable for testing the assay and generating evidence
- address more than one disease if relevant to vaccine design
- generate data to fill evidence gaps relating to protective immunity in the vaccine target populations
- be based in more than one location or country
- include, but are not limited to, analysis of samples from:
- natural history of infection studies
- clinical trials of vaccine candidates including cases of breakthrough infection or vaccine failure
- established, characterised human infection studies
- preclinical studies (including selective blocking and/or passive transfer studies)
Assessment criteria
The application process will consist of two stages, firstly a preliminary application stage, from which proposals will be shortlisted. Shortlisted applicants will then be invited to submit full applications, which will be reviewed by a panel of experts.
Preliminary applications should:
- be limited to a maximum of 1000 words
- describe the proposed methodology to harmonize data
- define the sample set that will be analysed, including samples from disease-affected settings if applicable
- propose a clear plan about how to harmonize sample collection, assay performance and data analysis if applicable
- provide a clear rationale to establish the relationship between the biomarker and disease endpoint if applicable
- describe the team structure and include details of collaborations proposed or already established
- provide a track record on assay development and monitoring immunogenicity in preclinical studies, vaccine trials and/or endemic settings
- describe a high-level timeline and budget strategy
- propose work packages, milestones and deliverables
Criteria for full application
Applications will be reviewed by a panel of experts who will consider a series of criteria, including:
- Strategic importance, approach, and methods
- How the proposal contributes to the overall understanding of protective immunity in disease-affected settings and its relevance for vaccine development.
- Suitability, quality and feasibility of the study design and methods, particularly methods seeking to harmonise data from multiple sources.
- The proposed timeline for the study, and timeliness in terms of clinical vaccine development.
- The choice of location(s) and datasets for proposed analysis.
- Contribution to building consensus across collaborators within a given disease field.
- Proposed strategy to engage early with stakeholders and regulatory authorities.
- The team, skills and experience
- The research skills and experience of all team members, relative to their career stage and role.
- Prior experience in vaccine development, especially working in disease-affected settings.
- A track record in assay development, standardisation and harmonisation of data and sampling procedures.
- The transdisciplinary nature of your research team and whether it contains the right combination of expertise.
- The team structure and project management plans.
- Research capacity and capability strengthening
- Quality and suitability of the research plan. Including development of research capacity in disease affected settings.
- An appropriate budget is allocated.
- An appropriate timeline is allocated.
- The added value of any in-country research capacity and/or capability strengthening particularly for assay development or data analysis.
What we offer
Duration of award: Up to 3 years
Funding level: Up to £5 million
Lead applicant
If you are based in the UK or Republic of Ireland, you cannot ask for your salary.
You can ask for a contribution to your salary if you are based in another high-income country (not UK or ROI) or a low-and middle-income country (LMICs) and hold a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract that states that you have to get your salary from external grant funding.
If you work at a charity, NGO, social enterprise or commercial organisation, you can request salary. Wellcome requires lead applicants to be completing research and leading a research team. Your charity would have to be capable of signing up to Wellcome's grant conditions and carrying out the research.
The amount we pay will be proportionate to the time you contribute to the award, for example if you contribute 30% of your time to the award we will fund 30% of your salary.
You will have to contribute at least 20% of your research time to this award.
Your administering organisation must confirm:
- that your employment contract states you must get salary recovery from external grant funding
- that they will underwrite the salary and post for the period of time that you will be working on the grant.
Coapplicants
Coapplicants must contribute at least 20% of their research time to this programme.
If any coapplicant employed on your grant holds a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract that states that they have to get their salary from external grant funding, you can ask us for a contribution to their salary in your application.
The amount we pay will be proportionate to the time they contribute to the award, for example if they contribute 30% of their time to the award we will fund 30% of their salary.
Your host organisation must confirm:
- that the coapplicant’s employment contract states they must get salary recovery from external grant funding
- that they will underwrite the salary and post for the period of time that the person will be working on the grant
Coapplicants can also ask for salary where they:
- Are employed by a charity, social enterprise or commercial organisation. The amount they request must be proportionate to the time they will spend on the grant.
- Don’t have a permanent, open ended or long-term rolling contract and they:
- Will spend 80% of their time on this grant. In this case, they can ask for their full salary. Their post does not need to be underwritten and can be contingent on the application being successful.
- Will spend less than 80% of their time on the grant. In this case, they can request salary proportionate to the time they will spend on the grant. The host organisation must guarantee space and salary support if they cannot get it from other sources for the period of time they are working on the grant. Their post cannot be contingent on the application being successful.
- Are employed on the award as post graduate research assistants. If they are to spend 100% of their time on the award, their post does not need to be underwritten by the host organisation and can be contingent on the application being successful.
Alternatively, coapplicants may get their salary through employment on another grant.
Staff working on your programme
We will cover the salary costs of all staff, full or part-time, who will work on your grant.
Staff members may include:
- research assistants or technicians employed on your grant
- specialist service staff, for example data analysis, fieldwork and clinical studies
- project manager, if you have multiple applicants on your programme
- support if you or a member of staff employed on your grant is disabled or has a long-term health condition – see 'Disability-related adjustment support'
Teaching buyout
If you’re a humanities and social science researcher, you can ask for funds for research or teaching replacement to cover the cost of a temporary replacement lecturer. You must retain at least a 10% commitment to teaching.
Costs:
- can cover up to 33% FTE of your contracted time are usually for a person at a more junior level than the postholder
- can be spread across the full period of the grant
If you already get buyout costs from another grant (funded by Wellcome or elsewhere), you can ask us for this cost, but only for the period of time on your Award when you won't receive buyout costs from another grant.
You must provide a letter from your employing organisation, confirming that your contract includes a teaching commitment. You should include this in your grant application.
PhD fees
We do not provide studentships on this award. But if applicants employ a research assistant on the grant, they can ask for the costs to cover their PhD fees. Each applicant can ask for PhD fees for one research assistant at a time on the grant.
We will only pay the international student fee rate for low- and middle-income nationals who are registered to study for a PhD in a high-income country. In all other situations, we will pay home student fees.
Staff salaries should be appropriate to skills, responsibilities and expertise. You should ask your host organisation to use their salary scales to calculate these costs, which should include:
- basic salary
- employer’s contributions, including any statutory obligations (for example, National Insurance contributions if you’re based in the UK) and pension scheme costs
- Apprentice Levy charges for UK-based salaries
- any incremental progression up the salary scale
- locally recognised allowances such as London allowance.
You should allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. If the pay award is not yet known, applicants should use the International Monetary Fund inflation rate, selecting the ‘inflation, average consumer price’ option as an indicator.
From Year 2 onwards, you should use your organisation’s current pay rates. We’ll provide a separate inflation allowance for salary inflation costs.
Read about the responsibilities of grantholders and host organisations for people working on a Wellcome grant.
If you have named people on your grant whose salaries will be funded by Wellcome, you can ask for visa or work permit costs to help them take up their posts at the host organisation. You can also ask for:
- visa costs for the person's partner and dependent children
- essential associated costs, such as travel to attend appointments at a visa application centre or embassy, and essential English language tests
- Immigration Health Surcharge costs for the person, their partner and dependent children if they will be in the UK for six months or more.
If you or a member of staff working on your grant is disabled or has a long-term health condition, you can ask for adjustment support to help you carry out your project.
Costs can include, but are not limited to:
- additional costs for staff to help with day-to-day activities related to your project
- assistive technology to help use computers, research equipment or materials – for example, text to audio software
- care costs for assistance animals if you need to travel.
We will not pay for capital or building costs, such as access ramps.
You can ask for these costs if your government and/or employer:
- does not cover any of the costs
- only covers some of the costs (if they do, we will only meet the shortfall).
The costs we provide must not replace the support you may get from the government or your organisation, who are responsible for providing these costs.
If you don't know what these costs are now, you can ask for them after we've awarded your grant.
You can ask for costs to cover the following types of training.
Continuing professional development and professional skills training
You can ask for a contribution towards these costs.
Types of training can include:
- research leadership, professional and people management skills
- career development support
- responsible conduct of research
- diversity and inclusion
- promotion of a healthy research culture
- understanding and reducing the environmental impact of research.
We expect your host organisation to provide and fund this training. However, if these types of training are not available, or the quality is inadequate, you can ask for up to £500 a year for you and each member of staff employed on your grant who will be:
- in a post of 12 months duration or more only and
- working on Wellcome funded awards for at least 50% full time equivalent.
You will need to justify these costs in your application.
Research skills training
You can ask for costs to cover training for the technical and research skills you need to deliver your proposed research.
You can ask for whatever research skills training you need for you, and each member of staff employed on your grant, who will be:
- in a post of 12 months duration or more only and
- working on Wellcome funded awards for at least 50% full time equivalent.
You will need to justify these costs in your application.
We will pay for the materials and consumables you need to carry out your project, including:
- laboratory chemicals and materials (for example reagents including the development of standards and standardised reagents, isotopes, peptides, enzymes, antibodies, gases, proteins, cell/tissue/bacterial culture, plasticware and glassware)
- project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) that is above the standard expected for the setting
- printing associated with fieldwork and empirical research
- associated charges for shipping, delivery and freight
You can ask for funds to buy animals if they are essential to your project. We will also fund the charge-out rates for animal house facilities if your organisation uses full economic costing methodology. These costs include:
- running costs (including animal maintenance, any experimental procedures, licences and relevant staff training)
- appropriate estates costs
- cage and equipment depreciation costs, but not building depreciation costs.
We may not pay the full charge-out rate for an animal house facility if we've provided significant funding towards the infrastructure and/or core support of the facility.
If your organisation does not use full economic costing methodology to establish charge-out rates for animal house facilities, you can ask for funds to cover:
- the cost of buying animals
- running costs (including animal maintenance, any experimental procedures, licences and relevant staff training)
- staff costs, for example, contributions towards the salaries of animal house technicians.
We will not provide estates or depreciation costs.
Equipment purchase
You can ask for basic items of equipment that are essential to your research project.
Costs may include purchase, delivery, installation, maintenance and training, where necessary.
We will cover VAT and import duties if:
- the usual UK exemptions on equipment used for medical research don’t apply
- you’re applying from a non-UK organisation, and you can show these costs can’t be recovered.
You can also ask for specialised equipment if:
- it is essential to the success of the proposed research project
- it is not available at your host organisation or through collaboration, and
- you’ll be the main user and have priority access to the equipment.
If a complete piece of specialised equipment costs £100,000 or more, we expect a contribution of at least 25% of the total costs, including maintenance, from the host organisation or another source. In some cases, we may expect a larger contribution. We’ll discuss this with you after we’ve assessed your application. Contributions can include benefits in kind, such as refurbishment or the underwriting of a key support post.
Multi-component items must not be broken down into component parts to avoid this contribution.
Equipment maintenance
We will cover maintenance costs for equipment if:
- you are requesting it in your application
- it is existing equipment that is:
- funded by us or another source
- essential to the proposed research project
- cost effective and environmentally sustainable to keep maintaining it.
We won’t cover maintenance costs for equipment if there is a mechanism in place to recoup these costs through access charges.
Computer equipment
We will cover the cost of one personal computer or laptop per person up to £1,500.
We won't pay for:
- more expensive items, unless you can justify them
- installation or training costs.
You can ask for the cost of access to shared equipment, facilities or services if they’re essential to your project.
These may include materials and consumables, plus a proportion of:
- maintenance and service contracts
- staff time costs for dedicated technical staff employed to operate the equipment or facility.
We don’t cover the costs of:
- estates and utilities
- depreciation or insurance
- other staff, for example, contributions towards departmental technical, administrative and management staff time.
We do cover these costs if related to animal housing facilities.
If the facilities or equipment were paid for by a Wellcome grant, you can only ask for access charges if:
- the grant has ended
- any support for running costs and maintenance contracts has ended.
You can ask for overheads if your grant will be based at a:
- university outside the UK or Republic of Ireland
- research organisation that does not receive core funding for overheads
- charitable or not-for-profit organisation
- small or medium-sized commercial organisation
You can also ask for overheads on any part of your grant that is sub-contracted to any of the organisations listed above.
If you’re based at a UK university you can’t ask for overheads for sub-contracted activity if your university will include the sub-contracted funding in its annual report to the UK Charity Research Support Fund.
Overheads can include:
- estates, for example building and premises
- non-project dedicated administrative and support staff
- administration, for example finance, library, and room hire
The total cost for overheads should be no more than 15% of the direct research costs. Please note that Wellcome’s usual overheads policy which allows organisations based in low- and middle-income countries to request up to 20% of direct research costs does not apply for this funding call.
These costs must directly support the activity funded by the grant.
How to apply for these costs
In your grant application you must:
- give a full breakdown of costs (you can't ask for a percentage of the research costs)
- explain why these costs are necessary for your research
- include a letter from the finance director of your host organisation, or the sub-contracted organisation, confirming that the breakdown is a true representation of the costs incurred
Research should be designed to minimise travel. You can ask for the cost of essential travel. The mode of transport should be low carbon, even if it is more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying).
We will not pay for business class flights.
Conference attendance
You can ask for a contribution towards the costs of attending scientific and academic meetings and conferences, including registration fees. The limits are:
- Grantholder – £2,000 a year
- Research and technical staff on your grant – £1,000 each a year
We provide costs to cover caring responsibilities if you or any staff employed on your grant attend a conference. This includes childcare and any other caring responsibility you have. We will pay these if:
- Wellcome is providing the salary
- the conference is directly related to the research
- the caring costs are over and above what they'd normally pay for care
- the conference organiser and their employing organisation are unable to cover the costs.
You can ask for up to £1,000 per person for each conference.
Collaborative travel
You can ask for travel and subsistence costs for collaborative visits for you and any staff employed on your grant. You’ll need to justify each visit and its duration.
Other travel
We will pay for other essential visits, for example to facilities, for sample collection and for fieldwork. You can include subsistence costs. You’ll need to justify each visit and its duration.
Carbon offset costs
This applies to all types of travel costs Wellcome provides.
You can ask for:
- the cost of a low carbon mode of transport, even if it is more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying)
- project-related resources or activities that provide an alternative to travel, such as video conferencing, communication and file-sharing software
- costs to offset the carbon emissions generated by the essential travel. If carbon offsetting for travel is not part of your organisational sustainability strategy, you can ask us for a similar level of support for other sustainability initiatives. Your organisation must get our approval before submitting an application.
We won't pay for the core infrastructure that your host organisation should provide, unless you're eligible to ask for these costs under our overheads policy. Examples of these costs include:
- organisation-wide video conferencing packages
- high-speed broadband
- HD screens.
See our environmental sustainability policy for what you and your organisation can do.
Subsistence costs
If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (for example, refreshments or newspapers).
If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.
If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.
If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.
If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £10 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.
If you’re away for more than 12 months, we will pay the costs of your housing. You should discuss your needs with your administering and host organisations.
The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. Please contact us if you need help calculating the costs.
We will cover the direct expenses you have to pay to find and rent a home. We will not cover the cost of utilities or any refurbishment.
Overseas research
If you or any research staff employed on your grant will be doing research away from your home organisation, we'll help with the additional costs of working on the project overseas. Please see the 'Overseas allowances' section for details.
If you or any staff employed on your grant will be spending time in another country, we’ll help you with the additional costs of working on the project overseas.
Overseas allowances are not counted against your £400,000 limit for research expenses.
Our overseas allowances are:
- a contribution towards the personal cost of carrying out research overseas, to ensure that you are not disadvantaged
- provided on the assumption that you’ll be paying income tax, either in your home country, or the country you will be working in (your personal tax is your responsibility).
- provided on the understanding that you or your partner will not receive equivalent allowances from elsewhere
- determined by the amount of time you will spend away from your home country.
Carbon offset costs
We expect the people we fund to choose travel that has a lower carbon impact, even if it’s more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying). We will not pay for business class flights.
You can ask for costs to offset the carbon generated by the travel as part of your overseas allowances. If carbon offsetting for travel is not part of your organisational sustainability strategy, you can ask us for a similar level of support for other sustainability initiatives. Your organisation must get our approval for other sustainability initiatives to be included in applications.
See our environmental sustainability policy for information on what you and your organisation need to do.
If you will be away more than 12 months, we will provide overseas allowances for your partner and any dependants if they are travelling with you.
If you will be away for 12 months or less and can justify why your partner and dependants must travel with you, we may provide overseas allowances for them.
We define your partner as the person:
- you’re married to
- you’re not married to but with whom you’ve been in a relationship for at least a year
and
- you live with at the same permanent address and share some form of joint financial commitment with, such as a mortgage.
See a list of low- and middle-income countries, as defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
You can ask for the following allowances. You need to provide estimated costs as accurately as possible.
We will pay your travel costs at the beginning and end of your overseas work. Costs can be for air, ferry, train or coach fares.
All fares should be:
- in line with our environmental sustainability policy.
- booked in advance where possible.
If you are away for up to 12 months, you can ask for up to 80kg of additional baggage or unaccompanied airline freight for your outward and return journeys.
If you are away for more than 12 months, you can ask for the costs of shipping your personal items at the beginning and end of your overseas work.
We will pay the full cost of transporting:
- half a standard shipping container if you’re travelling alone
- a whole standard shipping container (20ft) if you’re travelling with a partner and/or dependants.
We will pay the cost of your medical insurance and travel insurance.
If you will be working in a low- or middle-income country we will also cover the cost of emergency evacuation cover.
We won’t pay for medical insurance if you will be based in the UK or Republic of Ireland.
We will pay the costs of visas, vaccinations and anti-malaria treatment.
You can ask for this if you’ll be based in a low- or middle-income country and it is necessary.
Costs can include guards, panic buttons and alarms. You should ask your employing organisation for advice on the level of security you need.
If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (for example, refreshments or newspapers).
If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.
If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.
If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.
If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £10 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.
If you’re away for more than 12 months, we will pay the costs of your housing. You should discuss your needs with your administering and host organisations.
The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. If you need help calculating the costs please contact us.
We will cover the direct expenses you have to pay to find and rent a home. We will not cover the cost of utilities or any refurbishment.
If you’re away for more than 12 months we will pay:
Local nursery or school fees
You can ask for these costs if you are in a location where there isn’t free local education of the same standard as in your home country.
Costs include:
- local nursery school fees up to a maximum of 570 hours a year for 3 to 4 year olds
- local junior or secondary school fees, up to the end of secondary school education.
Local international school fees
You can ask for these costs if local schools do not provide the same standard of education as in your home country. We will only pay the published termly school fees.
We will not cover the costs of:
- extracurricular activities, including field trips
- other extras including, but not limited to, uniforms, sports kit and equipment, transport, meals, books and electronic equipment.
Boarding school fees
We will consider paying the cost of boarding school fees in your home country if:
- a local international school is not available
- both parents, guardians or the sole care giver live outside the home country.
The allowance covers:
- up to a maximum of £30,000 a year for each child for the published termly fees only
- the cost of return airfares at the start and end of each school term, in line with our carbon offset policy for travel.
We will not cover the costs of:
- additional annual leave airfares
- extracurricular activities, including field trips
- other extras including, but not limited to, uniforms, sports kit and equipment, transport, meals, books and electronic equipment.
We will cover the cost of providing special needs education as far as possible. Please contact us to discuss your needs.
We would not usually expect to provide an education allowance if you will be working in a high-income country.
If you will be away for more than 12 months, we’ll pay for you to travel back to your home country for annual leave. This is in addition to your outward and return travel costs and depends on how long you will be away:
- 12-24 months – 1 annual leave trip
- 25-36 months – 2 annual leave trips
- 37-48 months – 3 annual leave trips
- 49-60 months – 4 annual leave trips
- 61-72 months – 5 annual leave trips
- 73-84 months – 6 annual leave trips
- 85-96 months – 7 annual leave trips.
All fares should be:
- in line with our environmental sustainability policy
- booked in advance where possible.
If you will be away for more than 12 months, you can ask for up to 100 hours of lessons in the local language for you and/or your partner during the first 12 months of your visit.
We will cover 100% of the costs for local language school classes or up to 50% of the costs of individual tuition.
We will not cover the cost of examinations or personal learning materials such as DVDs and books.
We cover fieldwork costs if they’re essential and you can justify them. Costs can include:
- survey and data collection, including communication and data collection services and any associated costs such as essential field materials, travel costs and language translation services
- the purchase, hire and running costs of vehicles dedicated to your project
- expenses for subjects and volunteers, including the recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel costs
- statistical analysis.
You can ask for other fieldwork costs that aren’t listed here, but you’ll need to justify them.
How we calculate your inflation allowance
We will add an inflation allowance to your award. Your inflation allowance is based on your total eligible costs and the duration of the award.
We will use an inflation allowance that reflects the inflation rate of the country where the host organisation is based using data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). You'll receive the following allowance if the costs in your application are in pounds sterling.
| Award duration (in months) | Inflation allowance |
|---|---|
| 0-12 | 0.0% |
| 13-24 | 1.01% |
| 25-36 | 2.04% |
| 37-48 | 3.08% |
| 49-60 | 4.13% |
The costs in your application must be based on current known costs, excluding inflation.
You should allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. These should be based on pay awards already agreed; if you don’t know what the pay award is yet then use the IMF rate for the currency your award will be made in.
If your organisation receives open access block grant funding, you can ask them to cover your open access article processing charges.
If you're at an organisation that does not receive block grant funding, we’ll supplement your grant when your paper has been accepted for publication.
You cannot ask for these charges in your grant application.
If you need to carry out clinical research using NHS patients or facilities, we will cover some of the research costs.
Annex A of the guidelines for attributing the costs of health and social care research and development (AcoRD) sets out the costs we cover, and which costs should be funded through the Department of Health and Social Care in England, or its equivalent in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. If you're based in the Republic of Ireland, we would expect you to adhere to the spirit of these principles.
Read more information on our clinical trials policy.
If your proposal involves clinical research using NHS resources, check if you need to upload a SoECAT form with your full application.
We will pay for the conduct of clinical studies using established human infection models if relevant to the application.
We will pay for sample collection and analysis associated with samples from a clinical which is funded by Wellcome or another source.
We will not pay for costs associated with the conduct of clinical trials of vaccine products.
You can ask for costs that are essential to the project. These can include:
- materials, including printing and publishing
- other costs relating to engagement activities that are essential to carry out your research, such as collaborating with people with lived experience, patient involvement (including under-served groups) and community engagement
- dissemination of research results and findings arising from Wellcome funded research and workshops.
For more information, please refer to our guidance on using an engaged research approach.
We will provide funds if you need to outsource project work to:
- contract research organisations
- other fee-for-service providers.
We will provide funds if you need to outsource project work to:
- contract research organisations
- other fee-for-service providers.
Allowed costs
You may ask for the following costs (you will have to justify them in your application):
- specialist publications that are relevant to the research and not available in institutional libraries
- consultancy fees
- expenses for subjects and volunteers – includes recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel, as well as interviewee expenses
- reasonable research-associated costs related to the feedback of health-related findings but not any healthcare-associated costs
- costs associated with developing an outputs management plan
- questionnaires, recruitment material, newsletters etc for clinical, epidemiological and qualitative research studies
- recruitment, advertising and interviewee travel costs for staff to be employed on the grant
- purchase, hire and running costs of project-dedicated vehicles
- PhD fees for the grantholder (if required)
- project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) that is above the standard expected for the setting
- computing, including recurrent costs dedicated to the project (for example, software licences).
Disallowed costs
We will not pay for:
- estates costs – such as building and premises costs, basic services and utilities*
- phone, postage, photocopying and stationery, unless you can justify these within a clinical or epidemiological study
- page charges and the cost of colour prints
- research, technical and administrative staff whose time is shared across several projects and isn’t supported by an audit record*
- PhD stipends
- cleaning, waste and other disposal costs*
- office furniture, such as chairs, desks and filing cabinets
- clothing, such as lab coats and shoes
- non-research related activities such as catering, room and venue hire for staff parties, team-building events and social activities
- indemnity insurance (insurance cover against claims made by subjects or patients associated with a research programme)
- ethics reviews, unless you are in a low- or middle-income country
- radiation protection costs
- contingency funds
- organisation insurance
- clinical examination or course fees
- working capital costs of commercial organisations.
*We will fund these costs in the case of animal-related research or if you are claiming them as part of your overheads (see overheads policy for more detail).
What we don’t offer
Funding will not be offered for proposals that seek funding for the conduct of clinical trials unless in an established and well characterised human infection study.
How to apply
1. Before you apply
- Make sure you read everything on this page.
- Get some tips to help you write your grant application.
- You do not need to contact us before you write and submit your application.
2. Submit your preliminary application
- Watch a recording of a webinar demonstrating the new Wellcome Funding Platform from Thursday, 4 May 2023.
- Complete the preliminary application on Wellcome Funding.
- View the preliminary application form [PDF 116KB].
- Your application must be submitted by 17:00 (GMT) on the deadline day.
Wellcome will share your information with CEPI in a secure manner that allows each party to assess eligibility and suitability for funding and if awarded, compliance with our respective conditions and policies. In each case sharing, processing and retention is specified to be in accordance with all applicable legislation.
3. Shortlisting
At the shortlisting stage, Wellcome and CEPI staff and our advisors will review your preliminary application. If shortlisted, we will invite you to submit a full application within two months.
All shortlisted applications will receive feedback on the application. No feedback will be offered if your application is not shortlisted due to the quantity of applications that we expect to receive.
4. Invitation to full application
Complete your full application on Wellcome Funding. More information and guidance will be available after preliminary applications have closed.
5. Submit your application to your administering organisation for approval
Submit your application to the 'authorised organisational approver' at your administering organisation for approval. Make sure you leave enough time for the approver to review and submit your application before the deadline. The approver may ask you to make changes to your application.
6. Administering organisation reviews your application and submits it to us
Your application must be submitted by 17:00 (GMT/BST) on the deadline day.
7. Panel review
- A panel will be chosen based on their expertise within the relevant research field and will assess the proposals.
- The panel will review proposals and make funding recommendations to Wellcome.
- Committee membership will be comprised of a diverse range of international members and will take into account Wellcome’s diversity and inclusion priorities.
- Once the panel has been appointed, we will update this webpage to include their details.
8. Funding decision
You will receive an email notification of the funding decision soon after the decision has been made.
9. Feedback
Written feedback will be provided to all unsuccessful applicants, including the reasons for a decision.
Key dates
You must submit your application by 17:00 (GMT/BST) on the deadline day. We don’t accept late applications.
- 6 February 2024
Preliminary application deadline
- March 2024
Full applications invited
- 21 May 2024
Full application deadline
- August 2024
Funding decisions communicated
Contact us
If you have a question about your proposal or the remit of the funding call, contact us at:
We do not answer questions on the scope or competitiveness of proposals.
If you have a question about eligibility, what we offer or completing the application form, contact our funding information advisers: