Apply for research funding

At The Lily Foundation, we’re committed to finding a cure for mitochondrial disease through funding high quality medical research. It’s vital that funds raised through the generosity of our donors are directed towards research which will give us the best chance of achieving this goal.

The Lily Foundation is an NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) non-commercial partner, which means eligible funding streams are automatically eligible for NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) support and therefore entitled to access NHS support via the NIHR Clinical Research Network.

Call for applications – treatments for mitochondrial disease

Lily research grants will be offered to UK academic researchers and UK institutions that can demonstrate they are committed to discovering innovative treatments for mitochondrial disease. Clinical and preclinical treatment studies will be considered, provided they could realistically be expected to translate to clinical practice. Treatments are defined as reducing symptoms of mito, improving quality of life or lengthening lifespan of patients.

We’re committed to investing a minimum of £200,000 per year towards research to develop new treatments for mitochondrial disease. 

Call: Treatments for mitochondrial disease 23/24

Status: CLOSED

Opening date: Monday 18th September 2023 – 9am

Closing date: Friday 24th November 2023 – 5pm

Who can apply?

Any UK academic institution. Principal investigators should have a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract, salaried by a UK-based academic/research organisation.

Only one application per PI will be considered per funding round.

Grant overview

We will fund 12- to 24-month research projects up to a value of £100,000. We will consider funding projects outside this timeframe and over £100,000 only if they could clearly lead to significant/direct patient benefit. We are particularly interested in encouraging applicants to apply for pilot funding or efficacy studies to develop innovative concepts, with budgets of approximate £50,000 to 75,000.

Projects should include salary costs and consumables but no large items of equipment (£10,000 max).

How to apply

Lily grant applicants should prepare a submission covering 5 key areas:

• abstract on the potential treatment being investigated written in layman’s terms (max 100 words)
• objectives, methodology and plan of investigation with clear timeline, including preliminary results from previous relevant studies (max 3 pages of A4)
• summary of benefit to patients with mitochondrial disease (max 500 words)
• full project budget (including funding detail from all other sources). Separate budget requested from The Lily Foundation if not for the full project (max 1 page of A4)
• research environment and supervisory team (max 500 words); please attach CVs of all key applicants (max 2 pages to include details of current research funding and 1 page of up to 10 recent and relevant publications)
• confirmation of whether you would be willing for your application to be shared confidentially with Lily research funding partners.

All applications should be submitted as a single high quality pdf document incorporating all of the above.

Please note that applications which do not follow the prescribed format will not be accepted for review.

Application review

Applications will be evaluated by our international expert peer review panel, based on the following criteria: 

• contribution to treatment of mitochondrial disease and direct patient benefit
• scientific merit/ innovation, soundness of methodology and feasibility of achieving outcomes
• budget details (reasonable, justified and potential value of investment to The Lily Foundation)
• track record of investigator(s) and quality of research environment to perform work efficiently/accurately.

Queries or completed applications should be emailed to [email protected].

Decisions will be announced by May 2024.