RFPs: BioBRIDGe Grant Program 2024

These BioBRIDGe awards are designed to support academic researchers in traversing the drug development valley of death by funding and defining optimal strategies for advancing new, cutting-edge protein-based therapeutics (PBTs) from the lab to patients.

Types of Projects

• Projects eligible for TRxA BioBRIDGe awards include PBTs for the following indications:
  • Rare and orphan diseases
  • Neurodegenerative disease
  • Pediatrics
• The types of PBTs eligible for funding include:
  • Peptides or proteins
  • Regular, bivalent or trivalent antibodies
  • Antibody-drug conjugates
• Cell and gene therapy applications, oligonucleotides, and medical devices are not eligible at this time. Drug repurposing approaches also are not eligible during this special RFP.

Funding Information

• Awards are provided as milestone-driven payments. For this RFP, up to $250,000 can be requested for projects up to 12-months in duration.

Eligibility Criteria 

• To apply for BioBRIDGe awards, applicants must be faculty members at a university or non-profit research institution, anywhere in the world.

 Award Criteria

• Projects that would be good candidates for a BioBRIDGe award will meet the following criteria:
  • The mechanism of action of the protein-based therapeutic (PBT) is known.
  • One or more PBTs have been sufficiently profiled so that the parameters still to be optimized can be quantitatively specified.
  • A well-defined compound progression pathway with established success criteria is in place.
  • In vitro pharmacology assays (biochemical and cell-based potency and selectivity) are available in either the applicant’s or collaborator’s laboratories and have been demonstrated to be suitable to drive the characterization and optimization of the PBT.
  • There is a strategy for in vivo pharmacodynamic characterization to assess target engagement and efficacy of the PBT, utilizing clinically relevant outcome measures such as biochemical, anatomical and/or functional metrics.
  • A defined target product profile (TPP) is in place.
  • Small scale manufacturing of PBTs has been demonstrated in either the applicant’s or collaborator’s laboratories and effective purification techniques to reduce contaminants are in place. cGMP manufacturing is feasible and potential manufacturing and scale-up hurdles are addressed in the application.
  • A strategy is available to reduce off-target toxicity and the immunogenic potential while maintaining the bioactivity of the PBT molecule.
  • The project team is multidisciplinary, and includes members with expertise around the target biology, the platform on which the PBT is based, as well as clinical practice.
  • The PBT is patent eligible and unlikely to be blocked by any intellectual property constraints.

For more information, visit CPI.