ERDERA Joint Transnational Call 2025
Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS)
Aim of the Call
The aim of the call is to enable scientists in different countries to build an effective collaboration on a common interdisciplinary research project based on complementarities and sharing of expertise, with the expected impact being future use of the results to benefit patients.
Topic: “Pre-clinical therapy studies for rare diseases using small molecules and biologicals – development and validation”
Topics list
Research studies on therapies using small molecules, small non-coding chemically synthesized nucleic acid-based therapies, repurposed drugs or biologicals (e.g., antibodies or proteins such as enzymes, immune modulators or growth factors etc.). Proposals must cover at least two of the following areas:
1. development of novel therapies in a pre-clinical setting through cell, organoid and animal disease model studies, and/or use of in silico or artificial intelligence models to accelerate the success rate of the pre-clinical stage
2. development of predictive and pharmacodynamics biomarkers correlated to the efficiency of the therapy in a preclinical setting that could serve as surrogate endpoints
3. replication of pre-clinical studies in an independent lab to increase validity of exploratory findings
4. pre-clinical proof of concept studies for evidence of pharmacological activity in vitro and in vivo, pharmaco-kinetics and pharmaco-dynamics of the investigational drug (i.e., small molecule(s) and/or biologic) and first toxicology and safety data as well as studies to support readiness for initiating clinical trial authorization conforming to regulatory requirements.
Translatability into humans should be the key focus of the project, and applicants should demonstrate access to relevant scientific or regulatory expertise (e.g., through innovation task forces or competent national authorities).
Financement
Each partner is funded separately by the national/regional funding organisation they are applying to. They must fulfil the conditions of their funding organisation.
The maximum amount of requested funding per project is 300.000 EUR for a total period of thee years. If the project involves the recruitment of a PhD student, the project duration of the F.R.S.-FNRS sub-project could be up to four years.
Eligible costs items
Personnel costs: 80,000€ EUR per year on average for the duration of the project. The usual duration of ERA-NET research programmes is three years. However, when the project involves a PhD student, the principal investigator can apply for an additional one year funding in order to complete the four years PhD programme. Since this programme is co-funded by the European Commission, this final year should not be included in the budget submitted to this call.
Equipment: can be eligible up to 20% of the total budget of the project
Running costs: travel expenses; organisation of small scientific events in Belgium; consumables and the following support costs: consumables Publication Designing (conception d’ouvrage) Dictionary Production (réalisation de dictionnaire) Purchase of Books Encoding Software Access Rights Congress Registration Fees Purchase of Computer Scanning Travel costs Visa costs Open Access publication of an article up until 500 euros (see F.R.S-FNRS Open Access policy).
“Overhead” is not an eligible cost for FNRS. If the project is selected for funding, these costs will be subject to a separate agreement between the institution of the beneficiary and the F.R.S.-FNRS.
Pour postuler
Submission of joint transnational proposals:
Research consortia who intend to submit a transnational project proposal should register as soon as possible via the electronic proposal system: https://funding.erdera.org
There will be a two-stage submission procedure for joint applications: a pre- and full proposal stage. In both cases, one joint proposal document (in English) shall be prepared by the partners of a joint transnational proposal and must be submitted by the coordinator only to the JCS via the electronic submission system. Proposals must be prepared using the templates provided in the electronic system. Proposals not conforming to template instructions will be rejected.
Submission of F.R.S-FNRS proposal:
Applicants must provide basic administrative data by submitting an administrative application on e-space within 5 working days after the general deadline of the call to be eligible. Please select the “PINT-MULTI” funding instrument when creating the administrative application. This call follows a one-step procedure.
Deadlines:
Pre-proposal: 13 th February 2025
Full Proposals: 9 th July 2025
e-space: 20 th February 2025
Requis d'admission
Eligibility rules for the consortia
Only transnational projects will be funded. Each consortium submitting a proposal must involve four to six eligible principal investigator partners (referred to as partners below) from at least four different participating countries (see list in section 2).
The number of partners can be increased to 8 in two cases: 1. The inclusion of partners from participating countries usually underrepresented in projects (UR: Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Türkiye), OR 2. The inclusion of an additional ECR as full partner.
Eligibility rules for F.R.S. - FNRS
Applicants requesting funding from F.R.S. FNRS must comply with the following rules.
The applicant must be affiliated to a university from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).
At the closure of the call, the applicant should also:
- Be a permanent researcher of F.R.S-FNRS (Chercheur qualifié, maître de recherches ou Directeur de recherche) or;
- Hold a tenure track position (or an assimilated position including pending tenure track) with a research institution from the FWB
After the submission of applications, the F.R.S.-FNRS and the research institutions are required to verify the eligibility of the candidates. The F.R.S.-FNRS reserves the right to refuse those whose eligibility criteria would not comply with the Regulation.
In order the check the compliance with these eligibility criteria, please contact your contact person at ULB-TTO (see details below). T
he complete F.R.S-FNRS rules for international research projects is available at the following link: https://www.frs-fnrs.be/docs/Reglement-et-documents/International/FRS-FNRS_PINT-Multi.pdf
Zones géographiques
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