Investigator Initiated Clinical Trials (IICT)

IICT — 12th

Funds large-scale Swiss clinical trials addressing unmet medical needs to strengthen real-world implementation.

The SNSF Investigator Initiated Clinical Trials (IICT) programme funds large-scale randomised controlled trials (RCTs) addressing important unmet medical and societal needs that are not of commercial interest. The 12th call was launched on 27 February 2026. Trial types eligible include treatment, prevention, screening, diagnostic, quality-of-life, adaptive/platform, drug repurposing, and replication trials with significant knowledge gain. Excluded are studies for commercial purposes, non-randomised or uncontrolled studies, pilot studies, phase I and IIa proof-of-concept trials, safety-endpoint-only studies, and purely observational or preclinical work.

IICT projects run for five years and are typically multicentric, sometimes international in scope, going substantially beyond what standard SNSF Project Funding can support in terms of scale, complexity, and cost. Research groups are capped at five persons; all members must have an excellent scientific track record and demonstrated ability to lead a clinical study in a multicentric setting. Members collectively appoint a corresponding applicant who generally serves as the clinical study leader. Involvement of a Clinical Trial Unit (CTU) is highly recommended, and a letter of support is required if a CTU is involved. Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) is mandatory and must be documented across the full project lifecycle; a PPI preparatory grant of up to CHF 5,000 was available for activities between 1 July and 31 October 2026 (applied for by the 26 May 2026 LOI deadline).

The two-step application process requires submission of a Letter of Intent via mySNF by 26 May 2026 at 17:00 CEST — that deadline has passed, meaning only groups that submitted an LOI are eligible to proceed. Full proposals are due on 3 November 2026 at 17:00 CEST via mySNF. Competitive applications demonstrate that the trial addresses a question of genuine patient and societal importance where industry-led research is absent, and include a robust PPI strategy from the protocol development stage through to dissemination.