Untangling Addiction — Execution
Supports United Kingdom addiction science projects targeting substance use mechanisms and treatment translation.
Untangling Addiction is a $50 million Wellcome Leap program launched in 2025 to accelerate prevention and treatment of substance use disorder. The program sets three specific technical goals: developing predictive risk assessment tools with a minimum precision of 85 percent, creating quantitative methods to track recovery over time, and identifying novel therapeutic interventions. Wellcome Leap designed the program to bridge disciplines that rarely collaborate on addiction — including clinical medicine, neurobiology, addiction research, physical sciences, engineering, and computer science — drawing performers from universities, nonprofits, and the private sector.
Performer teams were selected through a competitive solicitation process that is now closed; teams are in early execution as of the 2025 launch. No new open call for applications was visible at the time of research. Wellcome Leap programs are generally open to universities, nonprofits, for-profit organizations, and research institutes; individuals are not eligible to apply directly. Individual award amounts are not publicly disclosed; the total program pool is $50 million. The program is structured as a cooperative agreement with performers accountable to defined milestones under Wellcome Leap oversight, not a traditional grant mechanism.
Organizations with capabilities in addiction neuroscience, predictive modeling, or clinical intervention research should monitor wellcomeleap.org/ua for future announcements. Leap programs in behavioral health are relatively new territory for the organization, and a successor solicitation or related program is plausible given Wellcome's broader mental health priority. Competitive teams for future Leap solicitations in this area will need to articulate measurable improvements over the status quo in precision risk prediction or recovery monitoring, not incremental advances in understanding.
Substance use disorder prevention and treatment research delivering predictive risk tools with at least 85% precision, quantitative recovery monitoring, and novel therapeutic interventions.
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