Team Grant : E-Rare-4 Joint Transnational Cal
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with your unit
Memorial Deadline: Tuesday 9th, June 2020
External Deadline: Tuesday 16th, June 2020
Description
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***Pre-Proposal was due to European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJPRD) on February 18, 2020.***
- SIRI will be offering support with application development for this opportunity. Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact Jennifer Stevens (v5js@mun.ca) early during the development process to discuss the services available to them.
- There are at least 7000 distinct rare diseases, the great majority being of genetic origin. Although individually rare, taken together rare diseases affect at least 26-30 million people in Europe. Moreover, they represent a major issue in health care: a large number of these diseases have an early or very early onset and/or lead to a significant decrease of life expectancy. Moreover, most of them cause chronic illnesses with a large impact on quality of life and the health care system.
Therefore, research on rare diseases is needed to provide knowledge for prevention, diagnosis and better care of patients. Yet, research is hampered by lack of resources at several levels: (1) Few scientists work on any given specific disease; (2) There are few patients per disease and they are scattered over large geographic areas, causing difficulties to assemble the necessary cohorts; (3) Existing databases and biomaterial collections are usually local, small, and not accessible or standardized; and (4) The complex clinical phenotypes of these diseases require interdisciplinary cooperation to improve research and treatment.
The specificities of rare diseases – limited number of patients per disease, scarcity of relevant knowledge and expertise, and fragmentation of research – single them out as a distinctive domain of very high European added value. Rare diseases are therefore a prime example of a research area that necessitates collaboration/coordination on a transnational scale.
In this context, the ERA-Net for Research Programmes on Rare Diseases (E-Rare) has successfully implemented 10 Joint Transnational Calls for rare disease research projects since 2006. This effort is now continued in the frame of the European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD) that has been established to further help in coordinating the research efforts of European, Associated and non-European countries in the field of rare diseases and implement the objectives of the International Rare Disease Research Consortium (IRDiRC).
CIHR-IG is pleased to be partnering with the Fond de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS), the Ataxia Charlevois-Saguenay Foundation (ARSACS), Muscular Dystrophy Canada (MDC) and approximately 30 other international funding organizations in the context of this European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD) call for proposals 2020. CIHR-IG is committed to expanding and improving the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases by creating the conditions needed to bring together creative, dynamic, interdisciplinary teams of researchers from across Canada and the European Community (EC) to collaborate for better health outcomes for the rare disease patient community.
The topic of the call is preclinical research to develop effective therapies for rare diseases.
Projects shall involve a group of rare diseases or a single rare disease following the European definition i.e. a disease affecting not more than five in 10,000 persons in the European Community, EC associated states and Canada. Applicants are encouraged to assemble groups of rare diseases based on solid criteria and commonalities if this leverage added value in sharing resources or expertise and has the capacity to elucidate common disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets.
It is highly encouraged that the research will focus on diseases without approved treatment options to contribute to the aims of IRDiRC in this area (for information see list of European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved orphan medical products [ PDF (1.01 MB) – external link ]).
For more information, please consult EJP RD JTC2020.
Additional information can be found at Research Net.