Calls

Description :

Five European anti-cancer charities (Fundación científica Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (Spain); The Anticancer Fund (Belgium); Fondation ARC (France); Kom op tegen Kanker (Belgium); Dutch Cancer Society (The Netherlands)) are joining forces to stimulate international research on rare cancer drug development. The focus of this joint international call, the ATTRACT-Call, is on late phase (2/3) clinical trials on rare cancer drugs. Improving treatment for rare cancers as well as bringing drug development to the next developmental stage are two of the current target goals.

All information regarding the ATTRACT-call, including background, scope, application requirements, preferences and recommendations, review procedure, timelines, funding conditions and estimated budgets can be found in the Guidelines for Applicants (available on KWF website)

Description :

Digital technologies in mental health care, advanced therapies for rare diseases, and improving hospital care are among the topics pencilled in for IHI’s next calls for proposals.

IHI has published the draft texts of topics under consideration for inclusion in the next calls for proposals on the Future Opportunities page of the website.

Concerning IHI 4, a two stage call:

• Expanding translational knowledge in minipigs: a path to reduce and replace non-human primates in non-clinical drug safety assessment
• Patient-centric blood sample collection to enable decentralised clinical trials and improve access to healthcare

IHI is publishing the draft topic texts in advance of the official call launch to give potential applicants additional time to start building a consortium and drafting a proposal.

• Topic 1: Expanding translational knowledge in minipigs: a path to reduce and replace non-human primates in non-clinical safety assessment
• Topic 2: Patient-centric blood sample collection to enable decentralised clinical trials and improve access to healthcare

Note that the topics may change considerably between the versions published here and the call launch, and applicants should check the final, approved topic texts once the calls are launched.

Important note: All information regarding future IHI call topics is indicative and subject to change. Final information about future IHI calls will be communicated after approval by the IHI Governing Board.

Description :

The European Commission has launched a call in the COVID-19 HERA Incubator part of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. The information below can be found here.

ExpectedOutcome:

This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to the development of large scale, COVID-19 cohorts and networks worldwide, including beyond Europe’s borders, forging links with European initiatives as a global response to the pandemic. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim at delivering results that are directed, tailored towards and contributing to all of the following expected outcomes:

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  In the short-term, contribution to a better understanding of the global circulation of the current and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and their characteristics, delivering recommendations on the best strategies to control viral spread, as well as on optimized clinical management and treatment of COVID-19 patients.

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  In the short-term, contribution to the evaluation of the impact of the variants of concern on the different vaccines and vaccination strategies and information on best vaccine and treatment options.

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  In the short/medium/long-term, monitoring the emergence of new variants of concern, elucidating the impact of different variants on transmissibility and severity of COVID-19 disease, including long-term post-infection sequelae (long COVID).

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  In the long term, establishment of regional and internationally linked strategic cohorts that can be pivoted rapidly to research on emerging infectious diseases.

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  In the long-term, contribution to regional and international pandemic preparedness networks to rapidly address pandemics in the future on a global scale.

 Scope:

Proposals submitted under this expression of interest are expected to build on existing large-scale, multi-centre, regional or international cohorts worldwide and/or establish new ones linked to those. These cohorts should aim to rapidly advance the knowledge on SARS-CoV-2 and its emerging variants of concern, with the aim of developing evidence-based strategic and robust recommendations for the effective control and prevention of COVID-19 infection. The regional or international cohort(s) should allow to rapidly and consistently provide estimations on the occurrence and spread of emerging variants of concern in different parts of the world. They should contribute to a better understanding of their transmissibility, virulence and pathogenicity.

Risk and protective factors to infection, and clinical manifestation including long-term post-infection sequelae (long COVID) should be investigated for different variants and different (risk) groups (e.g. children, elderly) to potentially identify biomarkers for vulnerable populations and inform treatment options.

The cohort(s) should also contribute to elucidating the effectiveness of the various first-generation vaccines and the risk of reinfection in previously infected individuals in the different cohort populations, including risk groups, to inform on optimal vaccine strategies. The effectiveness of second-generation or adjusted vaccines should be considered as soon as they become available.

Clinical studies, carried out within the cohort(s), might also help to inform best treatment options and vaccine strategies.

The cohort(s) should cover different regions of the world to capture the various variants and vaccine and treatment strategies.

To allow for harmonised, high-quality data collection, standardisation of clinical protocols facilitated data sharing and coordination across existing cohorts, a strong collaboration with the EU-funded projects ORCHESTRA and RECODID, as well as the EU COVID-19 data portal^[1] is expected. Applicants should describe their plans for such collaborations in the proposal^[2].

Applicant consortia are expected to collaborate with other relevant initiatives already existing or under development at national, regional, and international level, in order to maximise synergy and complementarity and avoid duplication of the research efforts. Coordination across cohorts and established clinical trial networks on COVID-19 treatment and vaccines is encouraged to improve research outcomes.

Strong collaboration with regional public health and regulatory authorities is strongly encouraged.

Proposals should include a plan on maintaining the established cohort(s) to strengthen regional or international research preparedness for a future epidemic or pandemic.

If more than one proposal is successful, proposals should collaborate and this should be foreseen in the proposal.

Gender-related issues are an important crosscutting priority of this Expression of Interest. All data should be sex- and gender-disaggregated, and attention should be paid to critical social factors intersecting with sex/gender, such as age, social origin, ethnicity/migration, and disability.

This action seeks to address the challenges linked to the COVID-19 variants. As such, the granting authority has activated the public emergency provisions included in the General Annexes, meaning that beneficiaries must comply with the public emergency related provisions listed in the General Annexes of the Work Programme 2021 (part G - Legal and financial set-up of the grant agreements) and in the Model Grant Agreement concerning the project implementation under Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), background and results, access rights and rights of use (article 16 and Annex 5) for the duration of the pandemic; and under Communication, dissemination, open science and visibility (article 17 and Annex 5) during the entire duration of the action and for four years after the end of the action.

It is expected that quality-controlled data are shared in accordance with the FAIR^[3] principles. The use of harmonised protocols in collaboration with other actors is recommended for this purpose.

For the selection of proposals for funding, the Commission will take the geographical distribution of activities into account.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 7 and 10 million would allow these specific challenges to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. Please note that expenditures can be covered from the date of submission of the proposal, but at the applicant’s own risk.

Proposals can be concise and should focus on the essential information to facilitate an appropriate evaluation.

• https://www.covid19dataportal.org
• Applicants should not contact these projects before they submit the proposal as this would lead to work overload for the applicants as well as the mentioned projects. Applicants should indicate in their proposal which networks/projects would be relevant for their proposed work. If their application is successful, the Commission will facilitate the connection between the coordinator/project and the relevant network/project(s) at the time the grant preparation will start.
• FAIR data are data, which meet principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. https://www.openaire.eu/how-to-make-your-data-fair

Description :

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) Joint Undertaking has launched its first calls for proposals, with topics on cancer, cardiovascular diseases and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as on cross-cutting issues such as the use of health data and early stage studies of medical devices. IHI is a public-private partnership between the EU and several health industry associations. IHI projects are funded jointly by the EU (from Horizon Europe budget) and by the private partners who bring mostly in-kind contributions.

In total, IHI will contribute up to EUR 135 million to projects funded under IHI call 1 (single-stage topics).

For IHI call 2 (two-stage topics), the IHI contribution is around EUR 22 million, matched by the contributions committed by industry and contributing partners.

In total, there are 6 topics in the calls currently open:

• Better support for patients with neurodegenerative diseases plus other diseases
• Next generation imaging and image therapy for cancer
• Towards more personalised, multi-modal cancer treatments
• Unlocking the potential of health data to improve care and advance research
• Improved prediction, prevention, diagnosis and monitoring of cardiovascular diseases
• A methodology to advance the early stage development of health technologies in the EU

The first four topics (on cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and health data) are launched under IHI call 1. The topics on cardiovascular disease and early feasibility studies fall under IHI call 2. The deadline for proposals for both calls is 20 September 2022.

Applicants can use the website of the IHI brokerage event until 15 July to schedule brokerage meetings and until 20 September to register as an active participant to find partners. Potential partners can also be found via the lists of participants from IHI webinars.