EP PerMed Joint Transnational Call (JTC) 2025

Aims of the Call

The overall objectives of the JTC2025 will be to

• Support research projects in human health on pharmacogenomic strategies for personalised medicine approaches that address one or more of the following aspects:
  • identification of new pharmacogenomic markers or signatures using (multi)-omics data in relation to drug or drug combination.
  • validation of a pharmacogenomic marker or signatures using (multi)-omics data in predicting drug or drug combination outcomes.
  • use pharmaco-omics strategies to determine the right dosage, the efficacy of treatments and/or the risk of adverse drug response and non-response to treatment to tailor personalised treatment pathways, including combined treatments (multi-medication).
• Encourage and enable interdisciplinary collaborations, i.e. multi-actor research by engaging a range of other relevant disciplines such as pre-clinical and clinical research, bioinformatics/health informatics/data research, ELSA research, implementation research or health economics research connected to the proposed research topic, including end-user perspective analysis to support the implementation of the research outcomes into clinical practice.
• Encourage cross-sectorial collaborations, by including the private sector (e.g. SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises), industry, as well as regulatory/HTA agencies and patient organisations.
• Establish participatory research, i.e. active representation of patients or citizens as part of research projects.

Projects are encouraged to combine the following aspects in their research:

1. Omics data such as epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics data in addition to genomics data in relation to treatment outcomes. A key goal is to assess the importance of one or more -omics approaches (multi-modal approaches) in optimising treatment outcomes.
2. Information regarding patient medication (prescription and non-prescription), dose or compliance.
3. Information (including clinical and environmental factors) regarding medication efficacy, adverse effects and patient reported outcomes (PRO).

Participatory research should be established in that active representation of patients or citizens is part of research projects. EP PerMed is supporting this approach by providing dedicated funding to organisations representing patients or citizens to participate as partners in proposals submitted to this call. Those organisations could support in designing the research, ensuring that research questions are relevant from the patients’ and citizens’ point of view. They might also support in collecting data for PROs and adverse effects.

Projects funded under this call are furthermore required to include a dedicated work package focussing on the question of implementation of the research outcomes into clinical practice with a focus on e.g. patient outcome, costs, reimbursement, education, ELSA (ethical, legal and societal aspect) or feasible use at the point of care.

Research projects in all disease areas are welcome. Research on polygenic drug response phenotypes is encouraged.

Exclusion: Projects focussing only on drug-drug-interaction are out of scope. Projects focusing on the clinical development of new drugs are out scope.

Please refer to the Call Text of the JTC2025 for further information and definitions.

General (Eligibility) Conditions for Application

Joint research proposals may be submitted by applicants belonging to an entity according to the following categories (subject to regional/national funding regulations; see “Guidelines for Applicants”):

1. Academia (research teams working in universities, other higher education institutions) or research institutes;
2. Clinical/public health sector (research teams working in hospitals/public health and/or other healthcare settings and health organisations). Participation of clinicians (e.g. medical doctors, nurses), pharmacists and general practitioners in the research teams is encouraged;
3. Private for-profit (industry) partners, e.g. SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) and private non-profit partners, e.g. foundations, associations or non-governmental organisations.

Consortia submitting applications to this call are strongly encouraged to include partners from different categories (1, 2 and 3) in line with the crosscutting/multidisciplinary nature of the call.

Only transnational projects will be funded. Each consortium must involve at least three partners from three different EU Member States or Associated Countries whose funding organisations participate in the call. Each of these partners must be eligible and request funding from the respective funding organisation. All three legal entities must be independent of each other. The project coordinator must be eligible to be funded by his/her regional/national participating funding organisation. The project coordinator (i.e. principal investigator and organisation) cannot be changed between the first and second stage.

Max. 2 project partners per consortium can request funding from the same funding organisation. For some funding organisations, the maximum number of eligible partners who can be funded in one project is limited to one (see also “Guidelines for Applicants” for individual funding rules).

No more than one partner with their own funding is allowed in the consortia with at least three partners eligible for funding (more indications in the Call Text: “B. Funding recipients”, section 7).

Pre-proposal stage: Maximum number of partners is 6 (no more than 2 partners from the same country including partners on own funding); Maximum number of partners can be 7 if the consortium includes a 3^rd partner of the same country (condition: funding requested from at least 2 different funders of the respective country; applies to only one country per consortium; including partners on own funding).

Widening concept: Consortia are allowed to include in the full-proposal phase an additional project partner that is eligible to receive funding from a funding organisation that is underrepresented in the second stage of the call and that agrees to participate in the widening option (a list of underrepresented regions/countries will be provided to coordinators invited to submit full-proposals).

Exception: To facilitate the integration of organisations representing patients or citizens in consortia, they can be added as additional partners at the pre-proposal stage or full-proposal stage. Organisations representing patients or citizens can be added as additional partner(s) either on own funds or by applying for funding, if eligible, from EP PerMed (see page 10) or the respective funding organisations. The consortia must follow all of the above-mentioned rules regarding the consortia composition without counting the patient/citizen representing organisations, except for the following rule: within one consortium, no more than 2 partners can request funding from the same funding organisation, including patient/citizen organisations. For some funding organisations, the maximum number of eligible partners who can be funded in one project is one.

Each project partner has to be represented by one principal investigator. Within a joint proposal, each project partner’s principal investigator will be the contact person for the JCS and the relevant regional/national funding organisation. Each consortium must nominate one project coordinator among the project’s principal investigators. The nomination of a project co-coordinator is not allowed.

If a partner is found to be ineligible by one of the funding organisations after the formal check, the entire proposal may be rejected without further review. For a definition of eligible partners, see “Guidelines for Applicants”, the regional/national regulations, and contact the concerned regional/national funding organisation.

A maximum project duration of 3 years may be applied for.