Pre-announcement: a transnational call addressing the adverse and beneficial effects of food ingredients and food processing on hypersensitivities to food
Food intolerances and food allergies are becoming increasingly common probably due to changes in the living environment, including diets. Individuals suffering from such problems often have to abstain from many food products increasing the risks associated to unbalanced diets. The scope of the present call is to fund dedicated, top-class transnational and transdisciplinary research consortia aiming to understand how food ingredients and food processing may affect hypersensitivities to food.
Through this call, the ERA-NET ERA-HDHL will contribute to create or reinforce the collaboration between research partners coming from different countries and different fields to promote research linking nutrition and health. Both public research partners (such as universities, research institutions, and hospitals), and private research (private companies and associations) will be welcome to join the present call.
Topic of the call
The aim of this call is to address how food ingredients and food processing methods could favour or prevent the occurrence of food intolerances and allergies in society. Proposals should include research on one or more of the following topics:
- the mechanisms, responsible for inducing or preventing food intolerances and food allergies, both in children and adults (e.g. immune response; inflammation; nutrient metabolism; genetics; microbiota; physiology);
- how food processing and food ingredients can modulate the occurrence of food allergies/intolerances;
- the development of new approaches to food processing (e.g. novel food ingredients, novel processing methods) to decrease food intolerance/food allergy;
- the development and/or validation of diagnostics/methods to distinguish between actual and perceived food intolerances and allergies (IgE and non-IgE-mediated);
- the development and/or validation of detection methods for adverse or beneficial food components generated through food processing.
Collaboration between partners from different areas of expertise (e.g. food technologists, nutrition scientists, social scientists, immunologists and / or health scientists) as well as the involvement of consumers and/or patients suffering from hypersensitivities to food, industry (as project partner, collaborator or advisory board) and other end-users are strongly encouraged. Proposals should clearly demonstrate the benefit of working together and the unique contribution of each participant. Animal models and in vitro work can be performed only if the model system used and the analyses performed have a clear relevance to human health and the topic being proposed. Proposals should make use of existing biobanks, if applicable. Epidemiological studies are not eligible for this call.
The consortium should be transdisciplinary and involve 3 to 6 partners eligible for funding from at least three countries participating to the call: Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Poland, and United Kingdom (country participation is not binding up to the call opening). No more than two eligible partners from the same country will be accepted within the same consortium. Two additional partners could also join the consortium if they do not request money to the funders and can fund their own work with a secured budget. ANR will only fund the French partners of the selected projects. The maximum funding allowed is 260 000 euros (or 310 000 euros if the French partner is also the coordinator of the project).
Selected projects will be funded for an initial period of three years.
In agreement with the ANR policy, funded researchers should respect the guidelines of the Nagoya protocol and consider open access publication of their results.
Submitted projects will be evaluated in one phase only (closure on April 8th, 2021) followed by a rebuttal that will take place from the 14th to the 24th of June 2021.
