New therapies for chronic non-communicable diseases

Specific challenge: Chronic non-communicable diseases represent a significant burden on individuals and healthcare systems. Innovative, cost effective therapeutic approaches are required to provide the best quality of care when prevention fails. While a considerable amount of knowledge has been generated by biomedical research in recent years, the development of new therapies is stagnating, in part due to a lack of clinical validation.

Scope: Clinical trial(s) supporting proof of concept in humans to assess the potential clinical efficacy of the novel therapeutic concept(s) and / or optimisation of available therapies (e.g. drug repurposing). The application may build on pre-existing pre-clinical research and additional results from large scale databases. A concise feasibility assessment justified by available published and preliminary results and supporting data should also be provided. Considerations of effectiveness and potential clinical benefit (possibly including real world data) should be integrated in the application if relevant.        

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected impact: This should provide:

         New therapeutic strategies, adapted where relevant to the differing needs of men and women, with the highest potential to generate advances in clinical practice for chronic diseases, including multi- or comorbidity, ready for further development.

         Early exclusion of candidate strategies unlikely to succeed.

         Contribute to the improvement of the therapeutic outcome of major chronic health issues with significant impact on burden of diseases both for individual patients and for health care systems.     

Type of action: Research and innovation actions