The UCSF Living Therapeutics Initiative’s (LTI) mission is to support the vast scientific talent and clinical expertise at UCSF and help accelerate the development of promising cellular therapies from basic research to clinical evaluation for patients underserved by other treatment options. The promise of cellular therapies spans multiple and diverse indications and as a result the LTI is disease agnostic.

LTI will consider cellular therapy proposals along the entire development continuum. For this call, there is a particular interest in projects at pre-IND enabling studies and later. To support the GMP manufacturing of cellular therapies, UCSF has partnered with Thermo Fisher Scientific on a new cGMP facility located on the Mission Bay campus dedicated to producing cellular products for testing in patients.

The LTI supports 3 funding mechanisms for cellular therapy projects:

• PRECLINICAL/PROOF OF CONCEPT STUDIES: Individual proof of concept awards may be up to $500,000 total over 2 years for the Full Award, and up to $75,000 over 1 year for the Pilot award.
• LATE-STAGE PRECLINICAL STUDIES: Awards for pre-IND enabling studies, manufacturing, or clinical trial start-up activities for cellular therapies and can be up to $1,000,000 total over 1-2 years.
• CLINICAL STAGE PROJECTS: Awards for clinical trial evaluation, clinical material manufacturing, and/or clinical correlative studies of cellular therapies and can be up to $2,000,000 total over 2 years.

More information about goals and requirements for these opportunities can be found here. If you have any questions, please reach out to LTI Director Cammie Edwards at [email protected].