EU Calls for Multinational Research Projects in Neurodegenerative Diseases

The European Union Joint Programme — Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) has launched a call for proposals for “multinational research projects for pathway analysis across neurodegenerative diseases,” such as Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Neurodegenerative diseases are a health, social, and economic problem in Europe and across the globe. With this in mind, the JPND determined it was critical to identify targeted investments that could help increase our understanding of the essential links between neurodegenerative and chronic diseases.

Recent evidence has shown that there is a clinical, genetic and biochemical connection between similar molecular pathways and that these play an important role in how different diseases behave.

This call requests ambitious multinational proposals that are innovative, collaborative and multidisciplinary, that can perform network analysis across different diseases to increase understanding of their underlying common mechanisms.

This type of research could lead to a re-definition of clinical phenotypes and new approaches that could transform the treatment of Parkinson’s and other diseases.

Participating JPND research will share a total of 23 million euro, which came from participating countries. Each country is responsible for funding its own national participants in successful collaborative proposals, according to its national budget.

Countries participating in this joint effort include Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.

Pre-proposals must be submitted by midnight March 6 Central European Time, via electronic submission.

This joint call follows another call successfully launched by the JPND in 2013, which supported 10 individual projects (available here). This previous call had a total funding of 12 million euro.

“JPND recognizes that a critical step in the path to effective treatments or preventive strategies for neurodegenerative diseases is a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of these diseases,” Philippe Amouyel, chair of JPND, said in a press release. “What recent research has made clear is that these conceptual advancements will require greater thinking across traditional clinical boundaries.”

“With this call, some €23 million will be made available to applicants to develop highly specialized cross-border projects that could lead to a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of neurodegenerative disease,” he said. “Our hope is that these developments will in turn lead to new, outside-the-box diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.”

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