Tackling High-Burden for Patients and Under – Researched Medical Conditions

Deadline: 16-Sep-25

The European Commission is seeking applications for Tackling High-Burden for Patients and Under – Researched Medical Conditions

Scopes

• A number of medical conditions fail to be recognised and/or be correctly diagnosed in a significant proportion of patients. As a consequence, they are inadequately treated and often can become a chronic and high burden for the patient. These medical conditions, including:
  • myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
  • autism
  • gynaecological diseases,
  • low back pain

Funding Information

• Budget (EUR): 30 000 000
• Contributions: around 6000000

Expected Outcomes

• This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination “Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed, tailored towards and contributing to most of the following expected outcomes:
  • The scientific and clinical communities make effective use of state-of-the-art information, data, technologies, tools and best practices to better understand the condition, underpinning the development of diagnostics, therapeutics and/or preventive strategies.
  • The scientific and clinical community exchange data, knowledge and best practices, thereby strengthening their collaboration and building knowledge and care networks in Europe and beyond.
  • The scientific and clinical community make wide use of newly established and where relevant open access databases and/or integrate them with existing infrastructures for storage and sharing of collected data according to FAIR principles, thereby encouraging further use of the data.
  • Policymakers and funders are informed of the research advances made and consider further support in light of the sustainability of the studies.
  • Patients and caregivers are constructively engaged with the research, which also caters for their needs.
  • Health professionals have access to and use improved clinical guidelines on diagnosis and/or treatment of the condition.

Eligible Activities

• Research actions under this topic should include all the following activities, ensuring multidisciplinary approaches and a broad representation of stakeholders in the consortia:
  • Proposals should address the gaps in robust, scientific evidence for improved policies and practices to tackle such a medical condition and aim at identifying the pathophysiological mechanism(s) (e.g. genetic, cellular and molecular) and potential risk factors (e.g. psychological and environmental) of the medical condition through basic, pre-clinical and/or clinical research. These efforts should underpin the development of diagnostics, therapeutics, and/or preventive strategies for the condition.
  • Proposals should demonstrate that the medical condition under study is insufficiently understood, inaccurately diagnosed or inadequately treated in a significant proportion of patients, and as such represent a high burden for patients and society. This could be through referencing key literature.
  • Sex and gender-related aspects, age, ethnicity, socio-economic, lifestyle and behavioural factors should be taken into consideration. In addition, the emotional and societal long-term effects of these chronic disorders for the affected individuals should be addressed.
  • Where applicable, the development of biomarkers and other technologies for diagnosis, monitoring in patients, and stratification of patient groups should be considered.
  • Where applicable, the development of clinically relevant, (non-)human model systems that can complement clinical investigations should be considered.
  • Exploitation of existing data, biobanks, registries and cohorts is expected, together with the generation of new (e.g. genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics) data.
  • To enable sharing of samples, quality data and advanced analytical tools, it is encouraged to make use of existing infrastructures developed at the European or national level.
  • Inclusion of patients or patient organisations in the research is strongly encouraged, to ensure that their views are considered.
  • Participation of startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is strongly encouraged.

Eligibility Criteria

• Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from no associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
• A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• Entities eligible for funding:
  • To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
    • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
      • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
    • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
      • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
    • Countries associated to Horizon Europe;
      • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

For more information, visit EC.