The Leap Fund will back early-stage, risky research that would not be able to secure funding through other channels.
UK-based charitable foundation Wellcome Trust announced the £250m ($330m) Leap Fund today to help accelerate research commercialisation originating from universities and companies.
The fund will launch operations from 2020, running for an initial five years and making up approximately 5% of Wellcome’s charitable investments during that period.
The fund will hire a chief executive within the next few months. The CEO will enjoy a significant amount of freedom, working with external community and having the authority to shape the portfolio, sign off on high-risk decisions and reallocate funds to projects as needed.
The Leap Fund will be specifically aimed at blue sky research in life science and healthcare that have not be able to secure funding through traditional channels, including Wellcome’s own grant program, as they have been deemed too risky.
The initiative will operate as a not-for-profit vehicle, aiming to deliver breakthrough innovations within five to ten years. It will operate alongside Wellcome’s existing vehicles, with Leap’s cash coming from the trust’s Reserve Fund established in September 2017.
Jeremy Farrar, director of Wellcome Trust, said: “We hope that by 2030, the Leap Fund will have produced a small number of breakthroughs on a vastly accelerated timescale. These may open up entirely new areas of research, allow new scientific questions to be answered, change existing practice within a field or deliver transformative health benefits.
“We do not expect all projects to succeed, but we think the possibilities are incredibly exciting. And in taking some risks and backing at scale, we think we can deliver transformational developments that will improve people’s lives around the world.”
