Introduction

Existing treatments for neu-rodegenerative diseases are limited in effect and mainly address the symptoms rather than the cause or the progressive course. In this context, the EU Joint Programme - Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) was established to better coordinate research efforts across countries and disciplines to more rapidly find causes, develop cures and identify better ways to care for peo-ple with neurodegenerative diseases.

The development of efficient treatments for most neurodegenerative disease is hindered by the fact that their detection intervenes at late stages in which the integrity of the nervous tissue is very compromised. Poorly characterised early physiological disturbances are known to appear before unambiguous symptoms of each neurodegenerative disease are detected.

All these signs have the potential to be used as early indicators of later dis-eases, and in most cases have the advantage that they are measurable in natural everyday life environments.

Call objectives

The overall objectives of the call are to:

• To establish a number of ambitious, innovative, multi-disciplinary and multi-national collaborative research projects;
• To establish projects that aim at identifying and measuring physiological effects and related biomarkers that can be linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as enhancing the understanding of causal underlying cellular, molecular, metabolic, inflammatory or other systemic processes.

Proposals must focus on one or several of the following neurodegenerative diseases:

• Alzheimer's disease and other dementias
• Parkinson's disease and PDrelated disorders
• Prion diseases
• Motor neuron diseases
• Huntington's disease
• Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA)
• Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)

Call Options:

Proposals submitted under this call may include, but are not limited to, the following types of re-search:

• Demonstrating the relationship between early neurodegenerative processes and physiological disturbances,
• Applying cuttingedge methods or technologies to improve the detection of early symptoms,
• Human or animal studies to decipher the neurodegenerationderived processes causing early disease-specific signatures
• Using digital technologies to link recognizable symptoms to physiological changes associated to neurodegeneration,
• Relating prognostic signs of disease with reallife measurement of physiological disturbances using home-monitoring and/or wearable devices, including wireless sensors for patient monitoring.

Duration: Maximum 36 months

Budget

Maximum funding per awarded Spanish project partner.

• Up to 175,000 EUR per partner (overheads included).
• Up to 250,000 EUR per coordinator (overheads included).

Eligible costs:

• Personnel costs for temporary employment contracts according to AES 2021 (scholarships are not eligible).
• Current costs, small scientific equipment, disposable materials, travelling expenses and other costs that can be justified as necessary to carry out the proposed activities.

Elgibilty

Only transnational projects will be funded.

• Each regular partner must verify their eligibility to request funding from one of the funding organization(s) of their respective country participating in the call.
• Each proposal must involve a minimum of three and a maximum of six regular partners, including the coordinator, from at least three different countries participating in this call.
• If the proposal involves at least one regular partner from an EU13 country (see below), the maximum number of regular partners is extended to seven.
• No more than two regular partners from the same country are allowed to join a proposal.
• External collaborators must secure their own funding. They must state in the proposal if these funds are already secured or how they plan to obtain funding in advance of the project start.

EU-13 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Participating countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey.

Application

There will be a two-stage procedure for applications: pre-proposals and full proposals. At both stages, one joint proposal document shall be prepared by the consortium and submitted by the coordinator. Pre-proposals must be submitted using the electronic proposal submission link.

• Deadline for preproposals: 02/03/2021 before 15:00h C.E.T.

• Must be submitted via the JPND electronic submission system. A pre-proposal template is available in this page.

• Deadline for full proposals: 29/06/2021 before 15:00h C.E.T.

• Will be accepted only from those consortia explicitly invited to submit them by the Joint Call Secretariat. Proposals must be submitted by the coordinator in electronic format.

In case of interest, please contact lnorton(ELIMINAR)@fsjd.org