Earlier this month, the European Research Council (ERC) announced the names of 44 of its grant holders who will receive top-up funding to explore commercial or innovation potential of the results of their ERC-funded research. These Proof of Concept grants, worth €150,000 each, can be used, for example, to establish intellectual property rights, investigate business opportunities or conduct technical validation. Among other selected projects, one aims to design a new vaccine strategy for RNA viruses, like Ebola, dengue and Zika. The budget of the overall 2016 Proof of Concept competition is €20 million. In the first round of the competition 141 ERC grant holders applied.
Source: https://erc.europa.eu/