Landmark call announced for neurodegenerative diseases research

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) has announced a €30m call for neurodegenerative disease research topped up with €10m from Horizon 2020.

The major new cohesive action with the European Commission entitled ‘JPcofuND’ expects to launch a joint transnational call for proposals in January 2015 and aims to support international research collaborations in three JPND priority areas: longitudinal cohorts, animal and cell models, risk and protective factors. The majority of the funding will be made available from the JPND member countries.

Speaking about the announcement, Professor Philippe Amouyel, chair of the JPND management board, said: “This unique co-funded initiative further establishes concrete synergies with Horizon 2020 to address this global threat. This is a significant scale-up of implementation of the JPND research strategy, and a major step forward towards the realisation of a ‘European Research Area’ dedicated to neurodegenerative disease research – an issue central to the joint programming concept.”

Adding his thoughts, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas said: “The EU Joint Programming approach tackles some of the major challenges we face as a society. Thanks to this new co-funded initiative of JPND and the European Commission, top European researchers will be working together to help the millions of people who suffer from Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. By making research more efficient and avoiding the duplication of work, this initiative will increase the prospects of real progress in the prevention and treatment of these diseases, as well as in patient care.”

JPND was established in 2009 to enable EU member states to work together on this challenge, and in particular on Alzheimer’s Disease. In the past five years, progress has been made by JPND through increasing co-ordination, collaboration and alignment between national research programmes and projects related to neurodegenerative diseases. This has resulted in the mobilisation of human resources, actions, funding and awareness to tackle this problem.