HRB/SFI Centres of Excellence in Neurodegeneration (CoEN) Initiative

Introduction

The problem of age-associated neurodegenerative disorders is a growing socio-economic problem in many countries. Currently, many age associated neurodegenerative disorders remain poorly understood with few known effective treatments, making research in this area is a high priority. Through HRB and SFI Ireland is currently participating in a member-states led initiative called Joint Programming on Neurodegenerative diseases (JPND). The initiative aims to take a more coordinated and coherent approach to funding research that will tackle a range of age-related neurodegenerative diseases (www.neurodegenerationresearch.eu).

A major obstacle to the integration of research on neurodegenerative disorders is the relative lack of common standards and mechanisms for efficient validation of potentially important findings in preclinical, clinical and population-based studies. One approach to tackling these large scale challenges is through more effective utilisation of existing large centres and institutes, where the necessary critical mass of resources and expertise exists. To this end, on 10th June 2010, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE, Germany) and the Medical Research Council (MRC, UK) launched a funding initiative to establish collaborative activity between national centres of excellence in research into neurodegenerative disorders. These founding members were joined by VIB (Flanders Institute for Biotechnology), the Health Research Board (HRB), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), and the Ministry of Health Italy (Ministero della Salute, MDS) in October 2010.

Objectives

The aim of the initiative is to build productive links between research groups within recognised centres of excellence in neurodegeneration, in partner countries, in order to add value to investments and accelerate progress in understanding the mechanisms of disease, as well as the identification of new therapeutic approaches (http://coen.org/home.html)

For this call, Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience has been nominated as the Irish Centre of Excellence after meeting criteria set out in the MoU agreed by the agencies involved. It is expected that teams will combine the research strengths across at least two partner countries to provide a true value-added collaborative effort that will advance our approach to neurodegeneration research. Projects will address issues that would not readily be funded through the standard grant mechanisms of the COEN partners, and it is expected that in addition collaboration across CoEs, projects should also serve to provide a platform for future collaboration.

Funding

The total fund for this call is £4.8m (€5.8m). The cost for successful bids involving research carried out in Ireland will be shared by HRB and SFI to a maximum of €600,000 over 24 months. 

Eligibility

For this call, Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience has been nominated as the Irish Centre of Excellence after meeting a number of criteria. For the purposes of this call a “Centre of Excellence” is defined by being: 

Applications are restricted to joint bids from Investigators within TCIN and Investigators from at least one other nominated Centre of Excellence.  Bids may include applicants from outside TCIN, but these must be as named collaborators in the TCIN-led bid.  Collaborators external to TCIN can receive funding.

Application procedure

Full details on the call for proposals, including scope of the call, evaluation process, eligible costs and participating Centres of Excellence are available on the COEN website 

Applications must be submitted by email as a PDF copy of the application form to:coen(at)headoffice.mrc.ac.uk 

Please bear in mind that costing of finances in proposals may have to be signed off by the host institutions administrative department. Please allow sufficient time for these additional processes. Any late applications will be rejected.

All bids including TCIN researchers must advise the TCIN Director Prof Shane O’Mara of their application, and bids led by a Principal Investigator from TCIN will require a letter of support from TCIN.

Bids involving researchers from Ireland must be pre-screened by SFI/HRB to ensure the following eligibility criteria are met:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Contact

If you still have questions regarding this call after reading the information on the COEN website, you may contact Dr Manus Ward at SFI manus.ward@sfi.ie or Dr Caitriona Creely at HRB.
Proposals for pre-screening should be emailed to manus.ward@sfi.ie and ccreely@hrb.ie