Tag Archives: Funding

Ten international JPND working groups recommended for funding

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) has released the results of a “rapid-action” call to support working groups of leading scientists to bring forward novel approaches that will enhance the use of brain imaging for neurodegenerative disease research.

Ten working groups have been recommended for funding to address the methodological challenges facing different imaging modalities, among them MRI, PET, ultrasound, MEG and EEG, as well as multimodal approaches. The working groups cover a range of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Frontotemporal dementia and Huntington’s disease.

“Brain imaging has made enormous progress in recent years and is currently one of the most promising avenues in neurodegenerative disease research,” said Professor Thomas Gasser, Chair of the JPND Scientific Advisory Board. “If we can solve the challenges in the field, brain imaging could rapidly lead to faster and better diagnoses as well as a deeper understanding of the fundamental aspects and mechanisms of neurodegeneration.”

Although imaging techniques have brought about a dramatic improvement in the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases, there remain a number of significant challenges in the field. These include the execution of multi-centre clinical trials of an unprecedented scale, data transfer across imaging centres and the use of imaging for diagnostics and for measuring clinical outcomes.

To address these questions, on January 8, 2016, JPND launched a call for community-led working groups on harmonisation and alignment in brain imaging methods. The proposals recommended for funding are for top scientists to come together and propose, through ‘best practice’ guidelines and/or methodological frameworks, how to overcome key barriers to the use of imaging in neurodegenerative disease research.

The call attracted proposals with partners from across Europe and beyond, including Asia, Australia, North America and South America. A notable number of groups based in the United States were involved in responses to the call. Funding decisions were based upon scientific evaluation and recommendations to sponsor countries by a JPND peer review panel.

“This call perfectly embodies JPND’s mission and objectives,” said Professor Philippe Amouyel, Chair of the JPND Management Board. “The purpose of JPND is to strengthen coordination and collaboration in neurodegenerative disease research across different countries. We want to ensure that research efforts are not duplicated, to build consensus and to accelerate a path toward a cure that works. This call convenes groups of leading experts to hammer out the hard questions, including the challenges of interoperability and shared and open data, to allow researchers to more rapidly and more fully exploit imaging techniques going forward.”

Each working group is expected to run for a maximum of 9 months. The outputs of the working groups are to be produced by the end of the funding period, and will be published on the JPND website and used for further JPND actions. In addition, a common workshop will be organised to bring together and present the recommendations of each working group, encouraging the further exchange of ideas and wider dissemination to different stakeholder groups.

For more information on the working groups recommended for funding, click here.

The Active and Assisted Living Programme (AAL), which aims to improve the conditions of life for older adults through the use information and communication technology (ICT), has opened its 2016 call, Living well with dementia.

The objective of the call is to advance the contribution of ICT to integrated solutions that enable the well being of people living with dementia and their communities, including their family, caregivers, neighbourhood, service providers and care system. The call aims to support innovative, transnational and multi-disciplinary collaborative projects with a clear route to market and added value for the different types of end users. A key priority underlying this challenge will be to bring together technologies and services to create ICT-based solutions addressing the specific aspirations and challenges of people living with dementia and their communities.

The submission deadline is 26 May 2016, 5PM CET. To learn more about the call or to register to watch the live webcast on 8 March, please visit the AAL website.

The ERA-NET NEURON has launched a new call for research proposals that will aim to address key questions relating to external insults to the central nervous system. These insults often cause permanent disability and constitute a heavy burden for patients and their families.

The call will accept proposals ranging from understanding basic mechanisms of disease through proof-of-concept clinical studies in humans to neurorehabilitation. The focus of the call is on primary physical insults to the central nervous system, i.e. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Spinal Cord Injury (SCI). The call covers acute traumatic events over the entire lifespan.

Excluded from this call are research projects on haemorrhage and hypoxia. Moreover, research on psychological/mental consequences of insults, including stress-related disorders (e.g. post-traumatic stress disorder), is not part of the present call. Research on neurodegenerative disorders will not be eligible in the present call.

The ERA-NET NEURON funding organizations particularly aim to promote multi-disciplinary work and to encourage translational research proposals that combine basic and clinical approaches, for the benefit of the affected patients.

The deadline for pre-proposal submission is March 14, 2016.

Visit the ERA-NET NEURON website to learn more about the call and to apply.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) has launched a new call for research proposals that will aim to accelerate the development of medicines in a number of key areas, including neurological disorders.

The Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease topic of the call focuses on better understanding how the protein tangles found in both diseases spread through the brain, with the ultimate goal of establishing new drug targets.

The IMI initiative, a partnership between the European Union and the pharmaceutical industry association EFPIA, aims to stimulate the development of safer and more effective medicines.

Other topics in the call, known as IMI 2 – Call 7, include safety, pain, cancer, eye diseases, and big data. Call 7 has a budget of €46.8 million from IMI, which will be matched by €46.8 million from the EFPIA companies in the projects. The submission deadline for this call is March 17, 2016.

IMI simultaneously launched a second call, known as IMI 2 – Call 8, for research proposals on Ebola and related diseases.

Visit the IMI website to learn more about the call topics and to apply.

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) has announced a rapid-action call inviting leading scientists in the field to bring forward novel approaches that will enhance the use of brain imaging for neurodegenerative disease research.

Imaging techniques such as MR, PET and EEG mapping have brought about a dramatic improvement in the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. In recent years, access to cutting-edge imaging technologies and platforms has expanded, and advances have been made in the harmonisation of acquisition procedures across scanners and vendors. However, fully capitalising on the use of brain imaging technologies for neurodegeneration research will require the development of new methodologies and the ability to achieve image acquisition and analysis at scale and at the global level.

The aim of the call is to establish a limited number of transnational working groups to address the key challenges facing the use of new and innovative brain imaging techniques in neurodegenerative disease research. The working groups will be community-led and will establish ‘best practice’ guidelines and/or methodological frameworks to overcome these barriers. Each working group can bid up to €50,000 for the support of its activities, which are expected to run for a maximum of 9 months.

According to Professor Philippe Amouyel, Chair of the JPND Management Board:

“JPND recognises that state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques are a vital resource for neurodegenerative disease research. However, achieving scalability for these technologies poses new challenges. For this reason, we’ve launched a rapid-action call inviting international research teams to address the most urgent issues in harmonisation and alignment in neuroimaging. The establishment of effective new guidelines and methodological frameworks will represent a critical step toward the full exploitation of brain imaging in neurodegenerative disease research.”

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)

Proposals must be submitted by 23:59H C.E.T. on March 10, 2016.

For more information about the call, please click here.

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) will shortly begin another action to support working groups on “Harmonisation and Alignment in Brain Imaging Methods for Neurodegeneration”.

The aim of the call is to establish a limited number of transnational, JPND-sponsored expert working groups to address issues of key relevance for the future use of brain imaging techniques in ND research. Each working group can bid up to €50,000 for support of its activities, which are expected to run for a maximum of 6 months.

This will be a 1-step call, anticipated to launch in early January 2016, with a likely submission deadline of March 2016. Further details will be provided on the call launch date in January 2016. However, any new ideas to tackle harmonisation and alignment in brain imaging will be welcome. For example, this may include:

Harmonisation of acquisition for current markers (acquisition and harmonisation of procedures, for example, for MR, FDG PET, and EEG signals)
Simplification of web access to image analysis environments (improving the secure access to innovative web-based image analysis environments for neurodegenerative diseases)
Innovative PET molecular markers (fostering the use of established and experimental PET methods)
Innovative ultra-high field (UHF) MR markers

Please Note:

Proposals are not limited to these topics, and may cover other topics within harmonisation and alignment of brain imaging methods.
All information regarding future JPND Call topics is subject to change.
Final call information will be published on the JPND website (www.jpnd.eu).

The diseases covered by JPND are:
– Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementias
– Parkinson’s disease (PD) and PD‐related disorders
– Prion disease
– Motor neurone diseases (MND)
– Huntington’s Disease (HD)
– Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA)
– Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)

The Dementia Discovery Fund, which is being established by the UK government with initial commitments totalling $100 million, brings together leading pharmaceutical companies, the UK government and Alzheimer’s Research UK to address the rising threat posed by dementia by supporting research into future treatments.

The fund aims to identify and nurture promising new avenues of research from around the world in the field of dementia. It is hoped that by providing critical financial support and expert advice during the early stages of research, the development of innovative new treatments for this disease could be accelerated.

The Dementia Discovery Fund will be structured as a typical venture capital fund, but will be the first to focus solely on dementia research. The Fund will comb the global research community for the most promising early stage research to invest in. A scientific advisory board of representatives from each of the partner organisations will provide expert scientific input during the selection of research programmes, as well as providing ongoing advice during pre-clinical and early clinical development. Partners will then be sought for the progression of promising assets through the clinical development pipeline, the intention being that proceeds from licensing or sale of such programmes will be returned to the Fund and its investors. The Fund will appoint a professional investment manager in due course, which will be responsible for its financial governance and investment decisions.

Source: Reuters

In a special issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron, experts debated the challenges associated with “translational neuroscience,” and the efforts that should be made to commercialize advances made in the laboratory so that patients can benefit from them.

Despite the major advances that science is making in understanding how the human brain works, several neurodegenerative disorders and psychiatric conditions are on the rise and are becoming more frequent, outpacing diagnostic and treatment approaches.

Dr. Katja Brose, Neuron Editor, explained: “A variety of global impact studies have identified brain disorders as a leading contributor to disabilities and morbidity worldwide with a critical economic, public health, and societal impact (…) There is resounding agreement that we need new approaches and strategies, and there are active efforts, discussion, and experimentation aimed at making the process of therapeutic development more efficient and effective.”

Using data from old clinical trials, two groups of researchers have found a better way to predict how amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) progresses in different patients. The winning algorithms—designed by non-ALS experts—outperformed the judgments of a group of ALS clinicians given the same data. The advances could make it easier to test whether new drugs can slow the fatal neurodegenerative disease.

The new work was inspired by the so-called ALS Prediction Prize, a joint effort by the ALS-focused nonprofit Prize4Life and Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods (DREAM), a computational biology project whose sponsors include IBM and Columbia University. Announced in 2012, the $50,000 award was designed to bring in experts from outside the ALS field to tackle the notoriously unpredictable illness.

Researchers studying frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) disease, a leading cause of early onset dementia, will receive more than $30 million over the next five years in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funding will be used to further scientific collaboration and investigate new treatments in the quest to find a cure for FTD.

Also, in Vancouver, Canada, on October 23rd, an FTD conference demonstrated the research progress made in this awakening field, with particular emphasis on the newly forged international collaborative relationships to comprehensively examine patients and their families in longitudinal cohort studies.