Challenge for Create2Solve can now be submitted!
ZonMw invites industry, research institutions and legislative bodies to formulate a challenge for Phase 0 of the call for proposals Create2Solve. In the initiative Create2Solve, the challenges from industry with animal-free innovations take centre stage. In the following phase, knowledge institutions and private partners will work on a project to come up with a solution fot the challenges.
While the pharmaceutical, medical technologies, chemical, cosmetics and food industries are increasingly seeking solutions to improve, for example, their prediction of clinical efficacy and/or risk and safety assessments without the use of animals, the solutions are still insufficient. These organizations can now submit challenges for which they wish to develop an animal-free solution until 6 January 2022. Subsequently, the parties concerned will come together in a matchmaking meeting this autumn so that afterwards, they can formulate the challenges together and turn them into a call for proposals. With this approach, ZonMw encourages the development of animal-free innovations with impact that must lead to marketable methods, models and/or services.
The phases of Create2Solve
Create2Solve consists of three phases. Phase 0 has now started:
• Phase 0: ‘Request for Challenges’
Industry, legislative bodies and research institutions submit challenges aimed at solving current problems so that innovations can be realised in an animal-free manner. By doing this, they request development of a animal-free solution to a problem, for which currently animal models are insufficient and no fitting alternatives are present. Two challenges will be selected and will result in a call for proposals.
• Phase 1: ‘Proof-of-concept projects’
Knowledge institutions, together with small and medium enterprises (SMEs), can submit a proposal for a proof-of-concept project for animal-free solutions for the challenges. The committee of experts will select a maximum of three projects per challenge. These will start in Phase 1 and have a duration of eight months.
• Phase 2: ‘Elaboration solution – research projects’
Two selected proof-of-concept projects, one per challenge, will further develop their animal-free innovation into a prototype. The duration of the research project is four to five years.
Funding and duration
The funding for Create2Solve is made available by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, the Dutch Research Council and the Dutch Society for the Replacement of Animal Testing. For each proof-of-concept project, a maximum budget of € 100,000 is available for a period of eight months. For the research projects, a maximum budget of € 900,000 is available per project for a maximum period of five years.
More information
With the call for proposals Create2Solve, which is part of the programme ‘More Knowledge with Fewer Animals’, ZonMw is organising demand-driven research into animal-free innovations.
• Request for Challenges
• Create2Solve is an initiative of the programme More Knowledge with Fewer Animals