Joint transnational call 2021 for proposals on Personalised Medicine through the ERA-NET: ERA PerMed

The French National Research Agency, in partnership with 23 countries launches the fourth joint transnational call for proposals on “Multidisciplinary Research Projects on Personalised Medicine – Development of Clinical Support Tools for Personalised Medicine Implementation” through the ERA-NET ERA PerMed. This represents the third additional call not co-funded by the European Commission, and following the first co-funded call.

The overall objectives of the ERA PerMed call are:

• To support translational research projects in the field of Personalised Medicine (PM);
• To encourage and enable interdisciplinary collaborations towards implementation of PM by combining clinical research, computer science/medical informatics and research on ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) in the field of PM;
• To improve disease prevention and disease management, based on broader and more efficiently characterised and defined patient stratification, diagnostics and tailored treatment/prevention protocols for both patients and individuals at risk of disease;
• To encourage collaboration between academia (research teams from universities, higher education institutions, public research institutions), clinical/public health research (research teams from hospital/ public health, healthcare settings and other healthcare organisations) and private partners e.g. SMEs (small and medium-sizes enterprises).

This call for proposals includes 30 research funding organisations from the following 23 countries and 5 regions: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Egypt, Estonia, Germany (Saxony), Hungary, Israel, Italy (Lombardy, Tuscany), Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Panama, Poland, Romania, Spain (Catalonia, Navarre), Sweden and Turkey. The available budget for this call is 24 million Euro approximately.

Scope of the Call:

Proposals must be interdisciplinary and clearly demonstrate the potential impact on PM as well as the added value of transnational collaboration.

The JTC2021 is constructed around the following three research areas in order to ensure the development of specific PM approaches, taking into account the major aspects for their successful implementation in the health systems: (1) “Translating basic to clinical research and beyond”, (2) “Data and Information and Communication Technology (ICT)” and (3) “Research towards responsible implementation in Health Care”:

Each proposal MUST address the modules 1B “Clinical Research”, 2 “Towards application in health care” and 3B “Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects”. The inclusion of modules 1A “Pre-clinical research” and 3A “Health Economic Research” is optional. Their added value to the proposal and the mandatory modules has to be clearly described.

Consortium composition

Joint research proposals may be submitted by applicants belonging to one of the following categories (A, B and/or C), if eligible according to relevant regional/national funding organisations’ regulations for research funding:

• A.    Academia or research institutes;
• B.    Clinical/public health sector;
• C.    (Industry) Private partners, e.g. SMEs (small and medium-size enterprises).

Only transnational projects will be funded. Each consortium submitting a proposal must involve at least three partners eligible for funding coming from three different countries whose funders participate to the call. All three legal entities must be independent of each other. At least two partners of the minimum three eligible project partners of the consortium must be from two different EU Member States or Associated Countries. The coordinator must be eligible to be funded by the participating funding organisations to this call. The maximum number of partners per project is six although no more than 2 eligible partners from the same country participating in the call will be accepted in one consortium (including those partners with own funding).

Research groups not eligible to be funded (e.g. from non-funding countries or not fundable according to regional/national regulations of the participating funding organisation) may participate in transnational projects if they are able to secure their own funding. They are considered as full partners and have to be integrated in the pre- and full-proposal templates as such. No more than one partner with its own funding is allowed in consortia with at least three partners eligible for funding.

At the full-proposal stage, a consortium may be expanded up to seven partners in total only by inclusion of a partner from an underrepresented country. A list of underrepresented countries will be provided to coordinators invited for full-proposal submission.

Funding will be awarded for a maximum of three years. ANR will exclusively fund French partners of the selected projects.