Objectiu de la convocatòria

The aim of the call is to enable scientists in different countries to build an effective collaboration on a common interdisciplinary research project based on complementarities and sharing of expertise, with a clear translational research approach.

Característiques principals

Topics: The research projects have to focus on the pre-clinical development of therapeutic approaches in suitable existing animal or cell models.

Therapeutic approaches can include:

a.    Cell-based therapy (e.g. somatic cell therapy, cell-based regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, therapies based on combination of cells with scaffolds or substrates, etc.)

b.    Gene therapy (e.g. transfer of nucleic acids for therapeutic purposes including DNA, RNA, oligonucleotides, etc.)

c.    Pharmacological therapy (e.g. use of chemicals or biopharmaceuticals including repurposing approaches, high throughput screening of molecules, etc.)

The following approaches and topics are excluded from the scope of the call:

a.    Therapeutic approaches concerning rare infectious diseases, rare cancers and rare adverse drug events in treatments of common diseases
b.    Interventional clinical trials or any project enrolling patients
c.    Development of new cell or animal models. The relevant cell or animal model must be already established for the purpose of the project
d.    Surgery or radiation therapies

The research projects submitted within this call must be based on novel ideas stemming from consolidated previous results and must be clearly endowed with a strong translational research orientation, i.e. bench to bed studies allowing a rapid implementation into public health-related decisions or into the clinics. In order to achieve this goal, the necessary expertise and resources should be brought together from academia, clinical/public health sector and private companies. The research teams within a consortium should include investigators from all scientific disciplines, research areas and expertise necessary to achieve the proposed objectives.

The research proposals must demonstrate complementary and synergistic interaction among the partner teams. There should be clear added value in the transnational collaboration over the individual projects, in term of:

i)    Gathering a critical mass of subjects/patients and or subjects/patients databases and corresponding biological materials that would not be possible at a national scale;
ii)    Sharing of resources (biobanks, models, databases, diagnostic tools, etc.) of specific know-how and/or innovative technologies, and of expertise. The projects should address the issues of potential efficacy of the proposed interventions and also clearly demonstrate the potential health impact.

Convocatòria (URL)

http://www.erare.eu/joint-call/9th-joint-call-european-research-projects-rare-diseases-jtc-2017

Requisits

Only transnational projects will be funded. Each consortium submitting a proposal must involve a minimum of three eligible and a maximum of six eligible partners from at least three different countriesparticipating to the call (see list above). No more than two eligible partners from the same country participating in the call will be accepted in one consortium.
In order to recruit the necessary patients, data and/or samples for the proposed study, a consortium may need to collaborate with other centers. If this is the unique role of those centers, they will not be considered as partners of the consortium.

Applicants are encouraged to include partners from the participating underrepresented countries (Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Turkey). If they include such partners, the maximum number of partners can be increased to seven or eight (see table below).

Deadlines

There will be a two-stage submission procedure for joint applications: pre-proposals and full proposals.
The call is scheduled to open on: December 5, 2016
•    Deadline for submitting the pre-proposals: February 1, 2017
•    Communication of selection of pre-proposals: End of April, 2017
•    Indicative deadline for submitting the full proposals: June 2, 2017

Dotació

The funding depends on national/regional rules. For Spanish entities, up to € 150,000 for coordinators and € 100,000 for partners.

Durada

3 years