Biology to Prevention Award

Overview

Our Biology to Prevention Award supports projects harnessing biological and mechanistic insights to provide new targets and approaches for cancer primary prevention.

Key information Timelines

Applications are reviewed twice per year. Upcoming application deadline: 18 June 2026

Funding period

Up to 5 years

Funding amount

Flexible, from around £100k up to £600k

Who is eligible?

Our core eligibility criteria are outlined below. Note that this scheme operates a closed round to ensure only eligible applications are submitted.

You must contact us for an informal and confidential discussion of your proposal prior to submitting your application. We’ll advise on your eligibility and provide guidance on submitting your application.

Email pprc@cancer.org.uk

The applicant

You can apply for our Biology to Prevention Award if you’re a scientist, clinician or healthcare worker who:

is based at a UK university, medical school, hospital or research institute (including our institutes)

has some postdoctoral experience or equivalent

in most cases, is fully funded by the host institution for the duration of the award

Career stage

We welcome researchers from all career stages to apply. We are particularly keen for early-career researchers to apply as lead or joint lead applicants. In such cases, we strongly recommend including at least one established researcher as co-applicant for mentorship.

We outline how we define career stages in our competency framework.

Read the framework

Collaborations

Through this award, we aim to foster new collaborative partnerships and drive truly interdisciplinary, innovative approaches. We strongly encourage:

collaborations between existing cancer prevention researchers and biologists, geneticists, immunologists, drug developers, as well as other new entrants to cancer prevention research

applications from research teams, which can be based across different UK institutions

Supporting roles from international and commercial organisations may also be included as co-investigators and collaborators.

Our partnership with the American Cancer Society

We’ve partnered with the American Cancer Society (ACS) to jointly consider primary prevention-focused research applications in the scientific remit of the Biology to Prevention Award scheme.

Through this partnership we welcome clear, well-defined, discrete project applications for up to five years from joint UK and US-based research teams (each based at the respective eligible host institution). Applications for co-funding are expected to be true, and where possible equal, intellectual partnerships between established UK and US-based lead applicants.

Each applicant should bring complementary yet distinct expertise to enable a multidisciplinary approach to address critical research questions in cancer prevention research. Through this partnership, we will cover the admissible UK research costs (up to £600k). ACS will cover the US-based research costs (up to $946k inclusive of 10% indirect costs).

The full application must be submitted by UK-based lead applicants through our online grants management system (Flexi-Grant) on behalf of the research team.

If you are interested in this partnership opportunity, please contact us with a brief outline of the proposed research for an informal and confidential discussion to confirm the proposal is in remit. Once confirmed, we will provide UK-based applicants with a private link to start an application on Flexi-Grant.

At this point, the US joint lead applicant(s) should get in touch with the ACS office to receive and complete an ACS costing template and get approval from the relevant office on the confirmed admissible costs (including institutional overheads). Any funding must be the American Cancer Society's funding policies.

After the above steps are completed, UK-based applicants can continue their application according to the guidance below. They must complete all required sections of the application and will be responsible for submitting the application by the submission deadline. Applications for co-funding must include a complete ACS costing form, in order to be considered eligible for funding.

Contact the American Cancer Society

View the American Cancer Society funding policies

Did you miss our co-funding webinar?

Catch up on our webinar for UK-US co-funding partnerships.

Watch the webinar recording (UK-US co-funding)

Download the slide deck (UK-US co-funding)(PDF, 1.64 MB)

Our partnership with the Canadian Cancer Society

We’ve partnered with the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) to jointly consider primary prevention-focused research applications in the scientific remit of the Biology to Prevention Award scheme.

Applications for co-funding are expected to be true, and where possible equal, intellectual partnerships between established UK and Canada-based lead applicants.

Through this partnership, we will cover the admissible UK research costs (up to £600k). CCS will cover the Canada-based research costs (up to C$1m for direct research costs only). The full application must be submitted by UK-based lead applicants through Flexi-Grant on behalf of the research team.

If you are interested in this partnership opportunity, please contact us with a brief outline of the proposed research for an informal and confidential discussion to confirm the proposal is in remit. Once confirmed, we will provide UK-based applicants with a private link to start an application on Flexi-Grant.

At this point, the Canada-based joint lead applicant(s) should get in touch with the CCS office to receive and complete an CCS costing template and get approval from the relevant office on the confirmed admissible costs (including institutional overheads). Any funding must be in accordance with Canadian Cancer Society’s funding policies.

After the above steps are completed, UK-based applicants can continue their application according to the guidance below. They must complete all required sections of the application and will be responsible for submitting the application by the submission deadline. Applications for co-funding must include a complete CCS costing form to be considered eligible for funding.

Contact the Canadian Cancer Society

View the Canadian Cancer Society’s funding policies

Did you miss our co-funding webinar?

Catch up on our webinar for UK-Canada co-funding partnerships.

Watch the webinar recording (UK-Canada co-funding)

Download the slide deck (UK-Canada co-funding)(PDF, 2.17 MB)

Use of your data

For the purposes of administering and evaluating applications for co-funding with the ACS or CCS, we will act as the operational manager and be responsible for the collection and proper handling of all data provided by applicant teams. Data will be collected in accordance with UK law and our privacy policy. We may also use the information for the purposes of knowledge-sharing, training and general business process reviews. Because of co-funding with ACS, based in the United States, and CCS, based in Canada, it is necessary for us and ACS or CCS to share personal data from any application. We will share the following data:

researcher names

job titles/positions

host institutions/organisations and locations

professional qualifications, positions and accolades

research proposals

contact details (email and phone)

salaries

Stricter controls and protections apply to the processing of personal data under UK and European law (including the General Data Protection Regulations) than generally apply to the processing of data in the United States. For example, though individual US states may have their own data protection laws and authorities, there is no federal equivalent to the Information Commissioner’s Office which receives complaints concerning the processing of personal data in the UK.

When you submit an application, as per our section 1.2 of our grant terms and conditions, the lead applicant will be required to confirm on behalf of each research personnel on the application, that you consent to the personal details listed above being shared by us with ACS or CCS.

You may contact us at any point to withdraw consent for your data to be shared with ACS or CCS by withdrawing your application for funding.

Read our privacy policy

View our terms and conditions

The host institution

Your host institution must approve your application before the submission deadline, so please ensure you are in contact with your institution’s administrative staff in advance.

You must ensure that your host institution will provide sufficient space and access to resources to undertake the proposed research.

If you receive core funding from one of our institutes (including the Francis Crick Institute), you may apply as a joint lead applicant with a researcher based outside the institute. However, you should explain why you require extra support in addition to the funding you receive from the institute and contact us b