CIHR Operating Grant: Joint Programme on Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) – Pre-Proposal

Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery

Deadlines

Academic Unit: inquire with unit

Memorial Deadline: RIS review not required for pre-proposal

External Deadline: Tuesday 5th, March 2024

Description

Mechanisms and measurement of disease progression in the early phase of neurodegenerative diseases

Neurodegenerative diseases are debilitating and largely untreatable conditions that are strongly linked with age. Worldwide, there are estimated to be 50 million people with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, the most common group of neurodegenerative diseases. This figure is expected to double every 20 years as the population ages. With very few causal treatments being available today, neurodegenerative diseases have high personal, societal and economic impact.

In this context, the EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) has been established to better coordinate research efforts across countries and disciplines to find causes, develop cures and identify better ways to care for people with neurodegenerative diseases.

It is known that the onset of neurodegenerative diseases occurs years before the appearance of the first clinical symptoms. However, our current understanding on the biological, psychological and social mechanisms that determine early disease progression as well as our ability to precisely monitor the course of the disease at pre-symptomatic stages is very limited. Delayed detection of disease progression may be the reason for the multiple failures observed in clinical trials during the past years. In this context, improving our understanding of the crucial biological mechanisms and psychosocial factors determining risk and resilience for neurodegenerative diseases is needed along with an enhanced measurability of disease progression through the establishment of advanced biological and psychosocial markers. Respective advancements may allow a more accurate identification of pre-symptomatic disease stages and a reliable monitoring of disease progression, thereby enabling a better prediction of disease trajectories and paving the way for new therapeutic and preventive approaches.

For this reason, CIHR is joining JPND on their launch of this joint transnational call with the aim of improving the understanding of disease mechanisms and advancing measurability of disease progression at early and pre-symptomatic stages of neurodegenerative diseases.

For more information, please consult the JPND Call for Proposals.

Research Areas

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

• – Unraveling the influence of molecular, physiological, psychological and social factors and pathways on disease progression as well as discovering new factors and pathways;
• – Defining key regulatory steps affecting the disease onset and progression;
• – Combining molecular, psychological, social and physiological markers in order to increase the robustness of the diagnosis;
• – Harmonization of the use of novel technologies and clinical measures to increase reliability and reproducibility of disease detection and monitoring;
• – Identifying molecular, environmental, social and behavioural modulators of disease progression with the ultimate aim of determining risk, protective and resilience factors;
• – Examining pathological processes related to neurodegeneration by using Artificial Intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies to understand the role of mechanistic pathways;
• – Enhancing patient stratification by establishing measures and technologies to characterize clinical subgroups at pre-symptomatic stages, e.g. ‘risk phenotypes’ or ‘at-risk’ groups;
• – Identifying compensatory mechanisms associated to early stages of neurodegenerative diseases;
• – Systematically analyzing the influence of genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic variability underlying neurodegenerative diseases on disease progression.

See ResearchNet for more information.

Funding Sources

Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR)