EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND)

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) initiative launched a new joint transnational call for multinational research projects on personalised medicine for neurodegenerative diseases. The call is launched in partnership with the European Commission and has a budget of ca. EUR 30 M.

Neurodegenerative diseases are debilitating and still largely untreatable conditions. They are characterised by a large variability in their origins, mechanisms and clinical expression. When searching for a medical solution, e.g. a treatment or an optimised approach for care, this large variability constitutes a major hurdle if not controlled. Indeed a treatment addressing one disease pathway may not be useful for all patients experiencing the relevant symptoms. Thus, one of the greatest challenges for treating neurodegenerative diseases is the deciphering of this variability.

The following neurodegenerative diseases are included in the call:

• Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias
• Parkinson’s disease and PD‐related disorders
• Prion diseases
• Motor neuron diseases
• Huntington’s disease
• Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA)
• Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)

JPND has chosen to focus in the area of Precision Medicine, which relates to the targeting of specific elements responsible for pathology in a given individual at a particular point in time. It is an emerging approach for disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment that takes into account individual variability in genes, biological/molecular characteristics together with environmental and lifestyle factors.

Thus, the call focuses on Precision Medicine in the following research areas:

• Diagnosis (e.g. biomarkers, imaging data, omics approaches, big data analyses)
• Prevention (e.g. biomarkers for studying novel treatments and interventions, co-morbidities, digital technologies, stratification within cohort studies and clinical trials)
• Care (e.g. improvement of social and health care systems, molecular profiling, imaging, lifestyle data)

A two-stage application procedure (pre-proposals and full proposals) will be open for consortia composed of researchers from at least three countries participating in the call: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

All applicants are advised to check the relevant national eligibility criteria and requirements, as those provide important information, for instance on how to fill out the budget tables.

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Draft timetable for applications:

• Deadline for pre-proposal submission: 12^th March 2019, 15.00 CET
• Deadline for full proposal submission: 25^th June 2019, 15.00 CET
• Submission deadline for UNISONO proposals for the participating Polish teams: 2^nd July 2019, 23.59 CET.
• Notification of accepted proposals: October 2019

Projects duration: 24 or 36 months.

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Call documents:

• Call Text
• Pre-proposal template
• Pre-proposal guidelines 

For more information please visit the call website:

http://www.neurodegenerationresearch.eu/initiatives/annual-calls-for-proposals/open-calls/personalised-medicine-2019/

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Information for Polish applicants:

1. We strongly encourage all applicants to read information on rules of participation and eligible costs included in the Annex to NCN Council’s Resolution on funding granted within calls for proposals for international research projects (UNISONO).
2. At the pre-proposal stage Polish applicants are not required to send any additional documents to the NCN.
3. Up to 7 days from the full proposal stage (no later than 2^nd July 2019) Polish applicants must submit their national applications in the ZSUN/OSF submission system. The application will include a budget that should be calculated according to the Annex to NCN Council’s Resolution on funding granted within calls for proposals for international research projects (UNISONO).
4. If one international project includes partners from two or more different Polish Host Institutions, these institutions apply as a group of projects. Each entity within the group has a separate budget, but the limit on the remuneration applies to the group as a whole (please see UNISONO). Please note that groups of projects have higher limits on the remuneration. 
5. Projects including Polish teams may last 24 or 36 months.
6. Budget of the Polish part of the research project in the ZSUN/OSF system should be given in PLN: 1 EUR= 4,1733 PLN.

7. NCN Council’s approach to the criteria of employing researchers at the post-doc posts in projects funded by the National Science Centre

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Call results

We are pleased to announce that three projects involving Polish researchers have been awarded funding in the JPco-fuND 2 call for multinational research projects on personalised medicine for neurodegenerative diseases. Within the JPco-fuND 2 over EUR 29,3 million have been granted to 18 research projects.

Complete list of the projects recommended for funding

JPco-fuND 2 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 825664.

Polish projects awarded within the call:

1. NMJ-on-a-Chip: Humanized high-throughput co-culture system for motor neuron diseases. Polish Principal Investigator: prof. dr hab. Józef Dulak, Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The project will involve research teams from France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands
2. OligoFIT: Oligomer-Focused Screening and Individualized Therapeutics to target Neurodegenerative Disorders. Polish Principal Investigator: dr Piotr Hańczyc, University of Warsaw. The project will involve research teams from Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, United Kingdom
3. Gums&Brains: Alzheimer’s disease as a co-morbidity of chronic periodontitis with Porphyromonas gingivalis as a causative link between both diseases. Polish Principal Investigator: prof. dr hab. Jan Stanisław Potempa (Project Leader), Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The project will involve research teams from Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Norway

Congratulations to all the laureates.

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There is clinical, genetic and biochemical evidence that similar molecular pathways are relevant in different neurodegenerative and other chronic diseases. Therefore, clinical phenotypes alone seem insufficient to provide an understanding of the underlying mechanisms involved, and to be the sole basis for prognosis and diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. 

The aim of the call is to establish a limited number of ambitious, innovative, multi-national and multi-disciplinary collaborative research projects that:

• combine experimental approaches from fundamental, pre-clinical and/or clinical with computational approaches
• perform network analyses in different neurodegenerative and other chronic diseases to elucidate the underlying mechanisms common and differing in the investigated diseases
• will add value to existing research by analysing diseases across traditional clinical boundaries, thereby gaining deeper understanding of the patho-physiological mechanisms of the diseases.

The following neurodegenerative diseases are included in the call:

• Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias
• Parkinson’s disease and PD-related disorders
• Prion disease
• Motor neuron diseases
• Huntington’s disease         
• Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA)
• Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Research team: composed of research a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 6 groups of researchers from countries participating in this call

Countries participating in the call:

Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey

Project duration: up to 3 years

NCN budget for the call: € 300 000

Timeframe:

Pre-proposal application deadline: 18^th of February 2014

Full-proposal application deadline: 23rd of June 2014

Final results: October 2014                  

Call documents:

Call text: http://www.neurodegenerationresearch.eu/fileadmin/Documents/2013/Call_Documents/2013_Calls/Cross_Disease_Analysis/JPND_call_Text_CD_final.pdf

Country-specific details: http://www.neurodegenerationresearch.eu/initiatives/annual-calls-for-proposals/closed-calls/cross-disease-analysis-2013/country-specific-details/

FAQ: http://www.neurodegenerationresearch.eu/?id=232

For more information please click here: http://www.neurodegenerationresearch.eu/?id=300   

Polish project awarded within the call:

Identification and structural characterization of the primordial cytotoxic conformers of the amyloidogenic cascade: Ideal prevention/diagnostic/therapeutic targets in neurodegeneration

Polish PI:

• prof. Marek Cieplak, Institue of Physice, Polish Academy of Sciences

Partners:

• dr Mariano Carrión-Vázquez – Proejct Leader, (CSIC, Spain),
• dr Damien Thompson (University of Limerick, Ireland)

It is widely perceived that a lack of knowledge regarding the causes of specific neurodegenerative diseases is one of the greatest unmet needs to be adDressed in ND research. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to better understand:

• the genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors that underlie an individual’s risk and resilience
• the triggering events leading to illness
• the relationship and interplay between these factors and their relative importance
• the role of potential environmental and behavioural modulators.

Research team: composed of research teams from at least 3 countries participating in the call

Countries participating in the call:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom

Project duration: up to 3 years

NCN budget for the call: € 500 000

Timeframe:

Application deadline: 19^th of March 2013

Final results: June 2013

Call documents:

National eligibility criteria

Call text

Frequently asked questions