Transnational Joint Call for proposals on human infectious diseases through the ERA-NET Infect-ERA

The French National Research Agency, in partnership with ten European countries, one associated country (Israel) and one third country (India), is launching a fourth call for proposals through the ERA-NET Infect-ERA. This initiative aims to promote international research on human infectious diseases.

The following countries participate in the call: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain.

Through this call aims to fund transnational and translational research, bringing together basic, applied and technology-driven research approaches of a broad variety of research topics regarding human infectious diseases. The call will enable multinational, collaborative research projects addressing specific topics of human infectious diseases.

Transnational research consortia are invited to submit proposals related with at least one of the following themes:

A.

The host-pathogen interactions, with regard to clinically relevant microbial clones, focused on host susceptibility (e.g., innate immune response, populations at risk, etc.).

B.

Development of innovative strategies for the diagnostic and treatment of highly clinically relevant microbial infections; optimisation of antimicrobial therapy in individual patients and development of biomarkers to allow individual response prediction.

To address the above two topics, the proposals could contemplate:

I.

Identification of host factors that define host susceptibility in regards to infection, disease progression and transmissibility.

II.

Differences in susceptibility to infections between individuals or inadequate response to infections and/or treatments.

III.

Host molecular mechanisms that define the competence of the pathogen.

IV.

Development of innovative strategies for the diagnosis and treatment of microbial infections for personalised treatments.

V.

Identification of biomarkers based on host-pathogen interactions enabling individual response prediction to shorten antimicrobial treatment courses.

VI.

Identification of rare mutations associated with host susceptibility.

VII.

Individual differences in response to vaccination.

VIII.

Development of innovative antimicrobial strategies focused on exploiting the host immune response.

IX.

Development of new methods for rapid determination of drug levels and/or microbial burden, at different body sites and in different bodily fluids, to optimise antimicrobial therapy in an individual patient.

Proposals dealing with HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are not in the scope of the call.
The proposals should successfully a) show a close cooperation between academic and clinical and/or industrial participants, b) convincingly present the application (exploitation) of the project results, and c) demonstrate a clear benefit to the public.

Each project proposal (pre- and full proposal) must involve a maximum of 6 partners* from at least three 3 participating countries (maximum of 2 partners per country). The minimum of 3 partners must be eligible for the funding organizations of 3 different countries participating in this call (see above). Non-funded project partners may also be part of the consortia if they are able to clearly demonstrate an added value to the consortium and secure their own funding. However the coordinator and the majority of the partners in a consortium must be eligible for the funding organisations participating in the call. If one of the partners is not eligible the proposal will be rejected without further review.
* Applicants are encouraged to include partners funded by the following funding organisations: ANCSI (Romania), IWT-Flanders (Belgium), NCBR (Poland), NCN (Poland) and NKIH (Hungary). If such partners are included in the consortium, the maximum number of partners can be increased up to 7. See call text for more details.

Part of the available funding is dedicated especially to consortia of young scientists. Each project leader of such consortia must be a “young researchers”, which is defined as having been earned a PhD or equivalent at least two and a maximum of nine years before the deadline for submission of pre-proposals (periods of maternity/paternity leave or military service shall be taken into account).

Funding will be awarded for a maximum of 3 years. The ANR will fund only the French partners in the selected projects.