Das ERA-NET ERACoSysMed wird voraussichtlich am 03. Februar 2017 einen Aufruf zur Einreichung von Projektanträgen zur Umsetzung systemmedizinischer Ansätze in der klinischen Forschung und der medizinischen Praxis veröffentlichen.
Scope: The call aims to support the development of projects fostering the implementation of Systems Medicine approaches, in both, clinical research and medical practice, by funding a number of high quality research projects that will improve our current knowledge of human health and disease.
Systems Medicine is defined as the implementation of Systems Biology approaches in medical concepts, research and practice. This involves iterative and reciprocal feedback between clinical investigations and practice with computational, statistical and mathematical multiscale analysis and modelling of pathogenetic mechanisms, disease progression and remission, disease spread and cure, treatment responses and adverse events as well as disease prevention both at the epidemiological and individual patient level. As an outcome Systems Medicine aims at a measurable improvement of patient health through systems-based approaches and practice.[1]
Demonstrator projects should start with an idea or concept that addresses a clear medical or clinical need. It is expected that project outcomes will improve current knowledge of health and disease, leading to new paths for clinical research aimed at delivering better and more efficient and personalised prevention, diagnostics and treatments of human diseases.
Projects should within their envisaged duration, substantiate the translation of Systems Medicine into medical research and practice by focusing on high quality data sets and clinical relevance. Furthermore they should define new innovative approaches and tools that enable the integration of biological and clinical data that will lead to the creation of new and/or improved computational models. The added value to the Systems Medicine field should be demonstrated.
Project proposals submitted under this call may include, but are not limited to, the following research areas/characteristics, as long as they fulfil the definition of Systems Medicine above:
- Understanding of disease complexity, early diagnosis of disease and the re-definition of disease phenotypes that will lead to better patient stratification.
- Understanding the influence of differences like gender, age, ethnicity or other relevant data for the development and treatment of diseases at an individual level.
- Investigation of shared common early pathways among diseases such as metabolism, immunology and cell proliferation to predict disease manifestation and progression.
- Exploitation of the prognostic, diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic value of existing clinical material and data or, where relevant, appropriate models.
- Refinement of experimental design and of prospective clinical data collection in newly set cohorts with the use of computational models that lead to a better understanding of the biological processes that play a fundamental role in complex diseases and identify key common underlying mechanisms.
- Definition of a clear strategy to clinically validate the outcomes of the project, including the validation of the predictions of in silico computational models that will be developed using experimental and already available clinical datasets.
- Proposals should provide clear evidence on how they expect to access appropriate, relevant and already available clinical material and associated data (patient cohorts with comprehensive clinical characterisation/annotation).
Note: Datasets for the proposed research areas should be already available before the implementation of the project. However, these datasets may be complemented and/or validated during the execution of the project.
In addition, each project proposal must meet the following conditions:
- Projects can be funded for a period of up to three years and according to national funding organisations’ regulations.
- Have effective multidisciplinary collaboration involving, both, clinical and translational researchers, medical doctors, epidemiologists, bioinformaticians, data management experts and where possible patient representatives and industry. Each consortium submitting a proposal must include at least one clinical partner, one computational biologist and, where possible, industry.
- Fulfil the legal and ethical international/EU and national and institutional standards.
- Provide a well-designed and feasible Data Management Plan based on the following five principles: Security, Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Re-usability.
Participating countries: several EU countries, Norway, Israel