Call identifier: ERC-2017-StG

ERC Starting Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they are starting their own independent research team or programme. Applicant Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal. Principal Investigator shall have been awarded his or her first PhD ≥ 2 and ≤ 7 years prior to 1 January 2017.

More information in the 2017 ERC Work Programme (see pp. 21-22 for Starting Grants)

Topic Identification:  SC1-HCO-07-2017

Stay tuned: here

Topic identifier: SC1-HCO-03-2017
Types of action: ERA-NET-Cofund ERA-NET Cofund

This call should aim at implementing a key area of the PerMed Strategic Research Agenda and be complementary with other funding programmes and activities at European and international level. Proposers are encouraged to include other joint activities including additional joint calls without EU co-funding. This work should be informed by the output of the coordination and support action envisaged in topic SC1-HCO-05-2016 - Coordinating personalised medicine research, without duplicating any of its work.

The proposed ERA-NET should demonstrate the expected impact on national and transnational programmes as well as the leverage effect on European research and competitiveness, and should plan the development of key indicators for supporting this. Participation of international partners is highly encouraged.

The Commission considers that a proposal requesting a contribution from the EU of EUR 5 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

More information here

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-03-2017
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

The aim of this research should be to apply genomics and/or other –omics and/or other high-throughput approaches for the molecular characterisation of rare diseases in view of developing molecular diagnoses for a large number of undiagnosed rare diseases. Undiagnosed rare diseases may range from a group of unnamed disorders with common characteristics to a phenotypically well described disease or group of diseases with an unknown molecular basis. Genetic variability due to geographical distribution and/or different ethnicity should be taken into account as well as genotype-phenotype correlation whenever applicable. In addition, age, sex and gender aspects should be included where appropriate. This large-scale proposal should promote common standards and terminologies for rare disease classification and support appropriate bioinformatics tools and incentives to facilitate data sharing. Existing resources should be used for depositing data generated by this proposal. Molecular and/or functional characterisation may be part of the proposal to confirm diagnosis. The proposal should enable and foster scientific exchange between stakeholders from countries and regions with different practices and strategies of rare disease diagnostics.

The selected proposal shall contribute to the objectives of, and follow the guidelines and policies of the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium IRDiRC (www.irdirc.org).

The Commission considers that requesting a contribution from the EU of around EUR 15 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of a proposal requesting other amounts.

More information here

Topic identifier: SC1-HCO-08-2017
Types of action: CSA Coordination and support action

Any type of activities that can help less performing countries and regions to build capacities and exploit opportunities to eventually increase their participation in EU funded collaborative projects can be supported.

The proposals will propose concrete measures for tackling structural barriers to health research and innovation, including those related to capacity, skills, policy, regulatory environment, and economic and socio-cultural factors including gender equality issues and gender dimension in research content.

More information and call documents here

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-08-2017
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

Support will be provided to clinical trials on substances where orphan designation has been given by the European Commission, where the proposed clinical trial design takes into account recommendations from protocol assistance given by the European Medicines Agency, and where a clear patient recruitment strategy is presented. Clinical trials may focus on a range of interventions with an orphan designation, from small molecule to gene or cell therapy, may include novel interventions and/or repurposing of existing and known interventions. The intervention must have been granted the EU orphan designation at the latest on the date of the full proposal call closure. A concise feasibility assessment justified by available published and preliminary preclinical or clinical results and supporting data shall also be provided. Appropriate plans to engage with patient organisations, Member States health authorities and considerations of efficacy/potential clinical benefit as well as early indication on health economics should be integrated in the application. In addition to the clinical trial, proposals may also include limited elements of late stage preclinical research and/or experimental evaluation of potential risks which must be complementary/contribute to the clinical trial(s) carried out within the proposal. The centre of gravity must clearly be the clinical trial(s). The participation of SMEs is encouraged.

More information and call documents here

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-02-2017
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

Proposals should deliver novel concepts for disease-mechanism based patient stratification to address the needs for stratified or personalised therapeutic interventions. The proposals should integrate multidimensional and longitudinal data and harness the power of -omics, including pharmacogenomics, systems biomedicine approaches, network analysis and of computational modelling. The new concepts of stratification should be validated in pre-clinical and clinical studies taking into account sex and gender differences. Applicants are encouraged to actively involve patient associations. The proposals should consider regulatory aspects of clinical practice and commercialisation opportunities. Proposals should focus on complex diseases having high prevalence and high economic impact.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

More information and call documents: here

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-10-2017
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

Proposals should compare the use of currently available preventative or therapeutic (pharmacological as well as non-pharmacological) healthcare interventions in adults[1]. While there is no restriction on the diseases or interventions to be the focus of proposals, preference will be given to proposals focusing on interventions with high public health relevance and socio-economic impact, i.e. interventions addressing conditions that are particularly frequent, may lead to co-morbidities, have a high negative impact on the quality of life of the individual and/or are associated with significant costs or where savings can be achieved. A cost effectiveness analysis must be included. Given the focus on existing interventions, proposals will aim to contribute to improve interventions, take decisions about the discontinuation of interventions that are less effective or less cost-effective than others, and make recommendations on the most effective and cost-effective approaches. A comprehensive array of clinical and safety parameters, as well as health and socio-economic outcomes (e.g. quality of life, patient mortality, morbidity, costs, and performance of the health systems) for chosen populations should be assessed. Agreed core outcome sets (COS) should be used as endpoints in conditions where they already exist, in other cases efforts should be made to agree on such COS. Randomised controlled trials, pragmatic trials, observational studies, large scale databases and meta-analyses may be considered for this topic. Where relevant the study population should address gender as well as socio-economic differentials in health and/or any other factors that affect health equity.

More information and call documents here

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-20-2017
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

More information and call documents here

The ERC Proof of Concept Grants aim to maximise the value of the excellent research that the ERC funds, by funding further work (i.e. activities which were not scheduled to be funded by the original ERC frontier research grant) to verify the innovation potential of ideas arising from ERC funded projects. Proof of Concept Grants are therefore on offer only to Principal Investigators whose proposals draw substantially on their ERC funded research.

More information in the ERC Work Programme 2017 (pp. 36-42)

As part of the European project INNOVCare, EURORDIS is organising a workshop on “Integrated Care for People Living with Rare Diseases” - 8-9 September, Gothenburg. Focus on: developing a pilot care pathway, using “case management” to link health, social and community services supporting people with a rare disease.
agenda
Registration: contact raquel.castro@eurordis.org before July, 15th

Genomics-2016 welcomes members around the world focused on learning about Genomics & Pharmacogenomics and its advances; this is your best opportunity to reach the largest assemblage of participants from the Genomics and its allied areas.

More information and registration here

Through the tremendous advances in the technology of mass spectrometry-based proteomics and its applications, the research has expanded to most areas of biology that deal with proteins. This conference will focus on the application of proteomics to cell biology and unraveling disease mechanisms by addressing conceptually novel ways to study long-standing questions in these fields.

Topics

• Cell Biology
• Cell Signaling
• Omics in Biology
• Interaction proteomics
• Chromatin proteomics
• Genetics and disease

More information and registration here

The Center for Vascular Anomalies (FR / EN), at Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc in Brussels, Belgium, which takes care of a whole variaty of pathologies within the field of Vascular anomalies, organise its 25 years anniversary event on September, 17th. This HCP is represented in VASCern by Pr. Laurence BOON and Pr. Miikka VIKKULA, and Chair the VASCA-WG.

More information on this event and registration here

The 17th Biennial Meeting of the European Society for Immunodeficiencies (ESID 2016) offers unparalleled access to the latest research and analysis in the field of immunodeficiencies.

More information and registration here

The 4th, and final, GenTAC Thoracic Aortic Disease Summit will be held September 22-23, 2016 at the Washington Capital Hilton in Washington, DC. The previous 3 Thoracic Aortic Disease Summits brought together prominent clinical, translational and basic scientists who presented research on disease etiology, pathogenesis, progression and treatment. This meeting will be held to continue sharing new findings from GenTAC and the research community, to discuss the current advances regarding disease pathogenesis, progression, and treatment and to identify future directions for the field.

More information here

The European Reference Network Board of Member States next meeting will take place in Brussels on September, 26th. The Member States representatives should discuss the 24 ERN Project Proposals which were submitted to the European Commission (DG Sante).

The two events intend to promote the establishment of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) Rare Disease (RD) registries in compliance with the IRDiRC and EU Recommendations and to support cooperation among different registry stakeholders and coordination with registries that are developed within National Plans in the EU in the field of rare diseases.

All information available:  here

"Bringing solutions to young rare disease patients"

Let's discuss the paediatric regulation

All information here 

RD-Action, the European initiative supporting the rare disease community and especially the ERN project, organises a 2-days Workshop on "Exchanging data for virtual care within the ERN Framework". The overall aim of this workshop is to generate and agree guidance and good practices for ERNs to collect and share data for care within the framework of ERNs. Potential Coordinators of the ERN project proposals being currently assessed by the European Commission have been invited to attend.

This initiative consists of a series of half-day events where national research communities are informed by representatives of the COST Association about the COST Framework’s policies, activities and funding opportunities, with an emphasis on the Open Call for new COST Actions proposals.

Information and registration here

The French Rare Diseases Foundation (Fondation Maladies Rares) organises a seminar (in French) on Social and Human Sciences (SHS) projects and Rare Diseases. It includes a session on primary lymphoedema and financial inequalities in access to care.

Draft programme: here

Call identifier: ERC-2017-CoG

ERC Consolidator Grants are designed to support excellent Principal Investigators at the career stage at which they may still be consolidating their own independent research team or programme. Applicant Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal. Principal Investigator shall have been awarded his or her first PhD > 7 and ≤ 12 years prior to 1 January 2017. 

More information in the ERC 2017 Work Programme (pp. 23-24 on CoG)

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-19-2017
Types of action: PPI Public Procurement of Innovative solutions

Proposals should address as primary aim public procurement of innovative solutions (PPI) to facilitate the deployment of an eHealth infrastructure taking into consideration the European eHealth Interoperability Framework and EU guidelines adopted by the eHealth Network. The PPI(s), and any accompanying innovation activities in particular by participating procurers themselves to facilitate the uptake of newly developed solutions, should focus on clear target outcomes such as allowing the sharing of health information, the use of semantically interoperable Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for safety alerts, decision support, care pathways or care coordination. The scope of the PPI(s) is to specify, purchase and deploy innovative ICT based solutions which can deliver sustainable, new or improved healthcare services across organisational boundaries while implementing eHealth interoperability standards and/or specifications (e.g. EN13606, HL7, Continua Alliance, IHE...).

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

More information and call documents here

Topic identifier: SC1-PM-17-2017
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action

More information and call documents here

COST is the longest-running European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among researchers, engineers and scholars across Europe.

You can submit your COST Action proposal at any time throughout the year via the new e-COST online submission tool. The next Collection Date is tentatively set for 1 December 2016, at 12:00 CET.

All information on COST Action here

Call documents and guidelines to submit a proposal here

The main philosophy of the meeting will be unchanged and our mission will be to offer to the participants an update focused mostly on the practical aspect of vascular surgery through a dynamic format based on rapid paced presentations.

All information are available here

Call identifier: ERC-2017-AdG

ERC Advanced Grant Principal Investigators are expected to be active researchers and to have a track record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years which must be presented in the application. There is little prospect of an application succeeding in the absence of such a record, which identifies investigators as exceptional leaders in terms of originality and significance of their research contributions.

More information in the ERC Work Programme 2017 (pp. 25-28 on AdG)