Crohn's & Colitis UK Targeted Research Awards

Crohn's & Colitis UK Targeted Research Awards

Funds United Kingdom medical teams studying inflammatory bowel disease through targeted research grants.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

Crohn's & Colitis UK's Targeted Research Awards are the charity's flagship annual grant programme for IBD science, offering awards of up to £150,000 in direct costs over three years. The programme funds research projects addressing Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and related inflammatory bowel diseases, with annual priority topics shaped by patient-identified unmet needs. In the 2026 cycle, the stated priorities were fatigue, toilet anxiety, unpredictable symptoms, and sleep disruption. Grants cover direct research costs only — staff salaries, materials, laboratory services, and expenses — and commercial organisations are ineligible; the programme is open to universities, NHS bodies, and research institutes based in the UK.

The 2026 cycle deadline was 9 April 2026; the 2027 cycle is expected to open in early-to-mid 2027 following the same outline-then-full-application structure. The process is two-stage: applicants first submit an outline application through the Flexigrant platform, and only those shortlisted at that stage are invited to submit a full proposal. Shortlisted applicants also receive a plain English summary review before proceeding. Both the Principal Investigator and the host institution must be UK-based. Early Career Researchers — including doctoral students and researchers up to ten years post-PhD — are explicitly welcomed.

To compete effectively, teams should frame their proposed work directly around the published patient-priority topics for the relevant cycle, as these are derived from structured consultation with patients and carers. Multi-disciplinary applications that bring together clinical and laboratory expertise are well received. Applicants who have not previously engaged with Crohn's & Colitis UK's research team are encouraged to make contact ahead of the outline-application deadline to ensure alignment with the current funding priorities.