GO-Bio ini­tial

The aim of GO-Bio ini­tial is to identi­fy and devel­op life sci­ence research approaches with recog­nis­able innov­a­tion poten­tial. To this end, work car­ried out in the very early phase of the innov­a­tion pro­cess – the so-called ​‘fuzzy front end of innov­a­tion’ (FFE) – is to be sup­por­ted with fund­ing. The FFE com­prises the idea and dis­cov­ery phase, which ends with the ini­tial prob­lem defin­i­tion and the decision to ini­ti­ate an innov­a­tion pro­ject. The res­ult of the fun­ded pro­jects should be a clear path for the fur­ther exploit­a­tion of a giv­en idea. Bey­ond the com­ple­tion of the idea and dis­cov­ery phase, the research res­ults should reach a level of matur­ity that enables the pro­jects to be con­tin­ued in oth­er estab­lished fund­ing pro­grammes for val­id­a­tion, start-up and com­pany cooper­a­tion, such as VIP+, EXIST Research Trans­fer, KMU-innov­at­iv or GO-Bio. The over­arch­ing goal is there­fore the seam­less trans­fer of prom­ising early ideas into application.

Sub­ject of funding

The sub­ject of fund­ing is the iden­ti­fic­a­tion and fur­ther devel­op­ment of life sci­ence exploit­a­tion ideas, prefer­ably from the fields of ​‘thera­peut­ics’, ​‘dia­gnostics’, ​‘plat­form tech­no­lo­gies’ and ​‘research tools’, from their con­cep­tu­al design to the veri­fic­a­tion of feas­ib­il­ity (‘proof-of-prin­ciple’, abbre­vi­ated to ​‘PoP’) and pos­sible exploit­a­tion options.

The core mod­ule of the fund­ing meas­ure sup­ports research and devel­op­ment pro­jects as indi­vidu­al or joint ven­tures, while an addi­tion­al mod­ule sup­ports trans­fer-ori­ented struc­tur­al pro­jects that pur­sue nov­el exper­i­ment­al con­cepts for shap­ing the FFE.

Pro­jects that fit them­at­ic­ally into the ​‘New Products for the Bioeconomy’ ideas com­pet­i­tion are ini­tially excluded from GO-Bio fund­ing. Inter­ested parties with bioeco­nom­ic pro­ject ideas should check the fund­ing oppor­tun­it­ies in the ideas com­pet­i­tion and, if appro­pri­ate, apply for fund­ing there.

The start­ing point for fund­ing should be very rough, sketchy ideas for com­mer­cial­isa­tion. Dur­ing an explor­at­ory phase, fund­ing is provided to indi­vidu­als or small teams who wish to fur­ther devel­op a com­mer­cial­isa­tion idea from the life sci­ences. At the end of the explor­at­ory pro­ject, the idea should have gained much clear­er con­tours, the path to imple­ment­a­tion, includ­ing pos­sible pit­falls and ways to cir­cum­vent them, should have been thought through, and a devel­op­ment plan for tech­nic­al imple­ment­a­tion should be in place. The idea gen­er­at­or and their team should have clar­ity as to wheth­er or not it is worth­while to pur­sue the idea in view of the oppor­tun­ity-risk pro­file that has been worked out. In a sub­sequent feas­ib­il­ity phase, if neces­sary, the tech­nic­al proof of concept (PoP) should then be provided.

Fund­ing is provided in two phases: explor­at­ory and feas­ib­il­ity phases.

Explor­at­ory phase:

Dur­ing the explor­at­ory phase, a poten­tial exploit­a­tion idea is to be developed based on ini­tial sci­entif­ic findings.

The main ele­ments should be the con­cep­tion, exam­in­a­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion of vari­ous exploit­a­tion options (e.g. com­pany form­a­tion, licens­ing, ​‘trans­fer via minds’). To this end, pos­sible products, ser­vices or oth­er applic­a­tions (e.g. test­ing pro­ced­ures) are to be defined from a mar­ket and demand per­spect­ive and refined iter­at­ively. Pat­ent applic­a­tions are not a pre­requis­ite for fund­ing and should, at most, cov­er the pro­tec­tion of basic tech­no­lo­gies. A con­crete imple­ment­a­tion strategy is to be developed for the most prom­ising exploit­a­tion strategy (includ­ing jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the selec­tion decision). In the explor­at­ory phase, ini­tial pre­lim­in­ary invest­ig­a­tions can be car­ried out to val­id­ate the tech­nic­al devel­op­ment plan.

If the applic­ant does not have any com­mer­cial­isa­tion exper­i­ence them­selves, suit­able con­sult­ants or cooper­a­tion part­ners must be iden­ti­fied and involved dur­ing the explor­at­ory phase. Ini­tial com­pet­i­tion and mar­ket ana­lyses should also be car­ried out.

When plan­ning the tech­nic­al imple­ment­a­tion, the intel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights situ­ation should be ana­lysed and a pro­pri­et­ary intel­lec­tu­al prop­erty rights strategy developed. In par­tic­u­lar, an explor­at­ory free­dom-to-oper­ate (FtO) ana­lys­is (as a pre­requis­ite for the second fund­ing phase) should be car­ried out, prefer­ably with pro­fes­sion­al support.

Since teams are gen­er­ally more suc­cess­ful, it is very import­ant dur­ing the explor­at­ory phase to attract addi­tion­al play­ers who are will­ing to take up and imple­ment the exploit­a­tion idea. An optim­al team should include a vari­ety of skills.

Fund­ing for the explor­at­ory phase is provided exclus­ively as an indi­vidu­al project.

Feas­ib­il­ity phase:

In the feas­ib­il­ity phase, once the explor­at­ory phase has been com­pleted and an ini­tial pos­it­ive FtO ana­lys­is has been car­ried out, devel­op­ment work should be car­ried out up to the PoP. Both indi­vidu­al pro­jects and joint pro­jects with aca­dem­ic part­ners can be fun­ded. If the recip­i­ent of the grant lacks cer­tain skills, reg­u­lat­ory require­ments can­not be suf­fi­ciently met, or it would be uneco­nom­ic­al to carry out cer­tain tasks in-house, sub­con­tracts may be awar­ded to spe­cial­ised ser­vice pro­viders or aca­dem­ic insti­tu­tions. Com­mer­cial enter­prises may only par­ti­cip­ate in feas­ib­il­ity pro­jects as sub­con­tract­ors or asso­ci­ated part­ners. At the end of the feas­ib­il­ity phase, con­nectiv­ity to estab­lished fund­ing pro­grammes such as VIP+, EXIST Research Trans­fer, SME Innov­at­ive or GO-Bio should be established.

It is not pos­sible to enter the feas­ib­il­ity phase dir­ectly without going through the pre­lim­in­ary explor­at­ory phase.

Addi­tion­al mod­ule – Accom­pa­ny­ing struc­tur­al projects:

To increase the trans­fer suc­cess of life sci­ence pro­ject ideas Tech­no­logy trans­fer insti­tu­tions in Ger­many often lack the capa­city to fully meet the com­plex trans­fer require­ments of life sci­ence pro­jects. As a res­ult, it is rarely pos­sible to devel­op a sound busi­ness mod­el or build a company.

This addi­tion­al mod­ule there­fore aims to pro­mote exper­i­ment­al struc­tur­al pro­jects by tech­no­logy trans­fer insti­tu­tions that focus on the devel­op­ment, test­ing and eval­u­ation of new formats for identi­fy­ing, select­ing and refin­ing par­tic­u­larly early-stage life sci­ence exploit­a­tion ideas, and estab­lish­ing suit­able meth­ods for the tar­geted and needs-ori­ented fur­ther devel­op­ment of such ideas dur­ing the explor­at­ory phase (see sec­tion 2.1.1). This should make trans­fer activ­it­ies more pro­fes­sion­al, cre­at­ive, effect­ive and sustainable.

Only indi­vidu­al pro­jects will be fun­ded in this addi­tion­al module.

Fund­ing recipients

Uni­ver­sit­ies and non-uni­ver­sity research insti­tu­tions are eli­gible to apply. The par­ti­cip­a­tion of uni­ver­sit­ies of applied sci­ences in GO-Bio ini­tial is expressly welcomed.

Per­sons who are par­tic­u­larly eli­gible to sub­mit pro­pos­als, lead or par­ti­cip­ate in fun­ded research pro­jects are those who are in a phase of pro­fes­sion­al ori­ent­a­tion or reori­ent­a­tion, i.e. on the one hand, Mas­ter­’s stu­dents, doc­tor­al can­did­ates or postdoc­tor­al research­ers who can ima­gine a career out­side the tra­di­tion­al aca­dem­ic sys­tem (e.g. in a spin-off or in industry), and on the oth­er hand, exper­i­enced pro­fes­sion­als who want to try some­thing new. Private indi­vidu­als are gen­er­ally excluded as recip­i­ents of funding.

In the core mod­ule (feas­ib­il­ity phase), the par­ti­cip­a­tion of com­pan­ies, espe­cially SMEs, either as sub­con­tract­ors or as asso­ci­ated part­ners without their own fund­ing, is pos­sible and desirable.

Addi­tion­al module:

Leg­ally inde­pend­ent tech­no­logy trans­fer insti­tu­tions that have con­trac­tu­ally reg­u­lated access to the tech­no­logy port­fo­lio of sev­er­al uni­ver­sit­ies or state-fun­ded non-uni­ver­sity research insti­tutes (of the same or dif­fer­ent spon­sor­ing organ­isa­tions) are eli­gible to apply.

Type and amount of funding

Research insti­tu­tions can receive up to 100% fund­ing on an indi­vidu­al basis. For research pro­jects at uni­ver­sit­ies, a pro­ject lump sum of 20% is gran­ted in addi­tion to the eli­gible expenses.

Explor­at­ory phase:

As a rule, up to €100,000 can be gran­ted for the explor­at­ory phase (plus a pro­ject lump sum for universities).

Only indi­vidu­al pro­jects with a stand­ard dur­a­tion of 12 months are eli­gible for funding.

Feas­ib­il­ity phase:

For the feas­ib­il­ity phase, up to €500,000 (plus a pro­ject lump sum for uni­ver­sit­ies) can gen­er­ally be gran­ted for indi­vidu­al pro­jects, or up to €1,000,000 (plus a pro­ject lump sum for uni­ver­sit­ies) for joint pro­jects or pro­jects involving research part­ners as subcontractors.

Fund­ing is avail­able for indi­vidu­al and joint pro­jects with a stand­ard dur­a­tion of up to 24 months.

Addi­tion­al module:

The basis for cal­cu­lat­ing grants to com­mer­cial enter­prises and for pro­jects car­ried out by research insti­tu­tions that fall with­in the scope of eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies is the eli­gible pro­ject-related costs. These can be fin­anced on a pro rata basis, tak­ing into account the require­ments of state aid law. Accord­ing to BMBF prin­ciples, an appro­pri­ate own con­tri­bu­tion is required.

For struc­tur­al pro­jects, up to €150,000 per year can gen­er­ally be gran­ted as a sub­sidy in the form of pro rata fin­an­cing. In the first fund­ing phase (four years), a con­tri­bu­tion of at least 10% must be made; in a pos­sible second fund­ing phase (a fur­ther three years), the con­tri­bu­tion to be made increases to at least 25%.

Pro­ced­ure

The applic­a­tion pro­ced­ure for the explor­at­ory phase is a two-stage pro­cess. The applic­a­tion pro­ced­ure for the feas­ib­il­ity phase is a single-stage process.