Wellcome is a global charitable foundation established in 1936 with a mission to improve health for everyone through science. It supports curiosity-driven research and funds innovative ideas aimed at solving urgent global health challenges. With an investment portfolio worth £37.6 billion, Wellcome empowers researchers by providing the time, resources, and collaborative environment necessary for groundbreaking discoveries. The foundation’s work focuses on three core areas: climate change, infectious diseases, and mental health, where it seeks to create meaningful change. In addition to funding research, Wellcome collaborates with policymakers, runs advocacy campaigns, and partners with organizations around the world to ensure that scientific advancements translate into real-world health improvements. Its vision is to create a future where good health is a shared reality across all communities, achieved through evidence-based solutions and inclusive scientific practices. By connecting scientific innovation with public policy and global cooperation, Wellcome continues to lead in health research funding and impact. The foundation is deeply committed to equity, ensuring that benefits of health science are shared widely and fairly, regardless of geography or socio-economic status.

This grant call, in collaboration with the Psychiatry Consortium, supports validation studies for novel therapeutic targets relevant to early intervention in anxiety, depression, and psychosis. The aim is to fund research that builds strong biological and therapeutic rationales, demonstrating how modulating a specific target could result in clinical benefits. The focus is on generating robust data packages that validate targets and explore their potential for new or improved pharmacological treatments. Projects may also help eliminate non-viable targets early to inform better future research directions. Eligible targets include biochemical entities such as proteins, enzymes, receptors, DNA, RNA, peptides, and gut microbiome components. The grant encourages projects that address all forms of anxiety, depressive, and psychotic disorders, including conditions like OCD, postpartum depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Funded proposals must show novelty, therapeutic rationale, potential patient impact, and a feasible research plan. Teams should include expertise in mental health biological mechanisms and use methodologies ranging from in-vitro and in-vivo models to imaging, genomics, proteomics, computational neuroscience, and more. Drug repurposing with a novel target focus is also acceptable. This funding aims to accelerate target validation as a foundational step toward drug discovery in mental health.