EP PerMed Joint Transnational Call (JTC) 2026 Personalised Medicine for CARdiovascular, MEtabolic, and kidNey diseases (CARMEN2026)

Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS)

Sciences de la vie (6)

Introduction and aims of EP PerMed

Personalised Medicine (PM) represents a paradigm shift from a “one size fits all” approach to an optimised strategy for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease for each individual, based on their unique characteristics, including biological features (e.g. phenotype, genotype), as well as lifestyle and other environmental factors. Accordingly, PM puts the patient at the very centre of healthcare, aiming for optimised health promotion, treatments and management of disease or predisposition to disease. Today, the field of PM has been advancing rapidly and the range of technologies, methods and information utilised has become much broader, supporting improved healthcare, diagnostics and tailormade treatments, including rehabilitation, and prevention strategies.

Aim of the call

With this JTC, EP PerMed will fund research projects in human health on innovative PM strategies for patients with cardiovascular, metabolic or kidney diseases. Research projects may focus on a single disease or explore these conditions in combination. Proposals should address one or more of the following aspects

• Development and validation of innovative personalised therapeutic approaches for cardiovascular, metabolic or kidney diseases through testing in relevant pre-clinical models (e.g., human cell cultures, organoids, organs-on-chips, disease-specific animal models, or in silico models).

• Identification and validation of molecular markers/signatures or cutting-edge technologies

(see also point 2 below) to monitor treatment response in patients with cardiovascular, metabolic or kidney diseases in order to tailor treatment pathways. This may include the analysis of the treatment effectiveness or treatment-related (including multi-medication) adverse effects as well as dose optimisation.

• Identification and validation of stratifying molecular markers/signatures or stratifying diagnostic technologies for early disease risk prediction and prevention of disease worsening or comorbidities in patients with cardiovascular, metabolic or kidney diseases, thereby delaying the progression to cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome.

Applicants are encouraged to combine the following aspects in their research proposal:

1. Multi-omics data such as genomics, epigenomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics data in relation to treatment outcomes. These data may be obtained from health data platforms or infrastructures, including population-level health databases.

2. Cutting-edge technologies such as AI/ML algorithms, next-generation imaging technologies, digital health tools, etc. to enhance early diagnosis, monitor treatment response, optimise therapy effectiveness or dosage, and detect or prevent comorbidities and treatment-related side effects in patients.

3. Information regarding patient medication, dose or compliance, medication efficacy, adverse effects, patient reported outcomes (PRO) or patient preferences.

4. Additional factors such as sex/gender dimension, age, environmental and social background, lifestyle, or nutritional status.

Financement

Each partner is funded separately by the national/regional funding organisation they are applying to. They must fulfil the conditions of their funding organisation.
The maximum amount of requested funding per project is 300.000 EUR for a total period of thee years. If the project involves the recruitment of a PhD student, the project duration of the F.R.S.-FNRS sub-project could be up to four years.

Eligible costs items

Personnel costs: 80,000€ EUR per year on average for the duration of the project. The usual duration of ERA-NET research programmes is three years. However, when the project involves a PhD student, the principal investigator can apply for an additional one year funding in order to complete the four years PhD programme. Since this programme is co-funded by the European Commission, this final year should not be included in the budget submitted to this call.

Equipment: can be eligible up to 20% of the total budget of the project

Running costs: travel expenses; organisation of small scientific events in Belgium; consumables and the following support costs: consumables Publication Designing (conception d’ouvrage) Dictionary Production (réalisation de dictionnaire) Purchase of Books Encoding Software Access Rights Congress Registration Fees Purchase of Computer Scanning Travel costs Visa costs Open Access publication of an article up until 500 euros (see F.R.S-FNRS Open Access policy).

“Overhead”

For “overhead” costs:

Operating expenses: up to 1% within the granted budget. This percentage should be included in the requested operating budget.

Personnel: up to 2% outside of the granted budget. This percentage will be paid upon reimbursement of expenses to institutions by the F.R.S.-FNRS.

Pour postuler

Eligibility of the consortia

A two-step submission and evaluation procedure has been established for joint applications: preproposals and full proposals. In both phases, one joint proposal document shall be prepared by the partners of a joint transnational project. The document must be submitted to the JCS by the project coordinator by uploading it via the electronic submission system (https://ptoutline.eu/app/eppermed2026).

Eligibility for belgian partners (F.R.S. - FNRS):

Applicants requesting funding from F.R.S. FNRS must comply with the following rules.

The applicant must be affiliated to a university from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).

At the closure of the call, the applicant should also:

- Be a permanent researcher of F.R.S-FNRS (Chercheur qualifié, maître de recherches ou Directeur de recherche) or;

- Hold a tenure track position (or an assimilated position including pending tenure track) with a research institution from the FWB

After the submission of applications, the F.R.S.-FNRS and the research institutions are required to verify the eligibility of the candidates. The F.R.S.-FNRS reserves the right to refuse those whose eligibility criteria would not comply with the Regulation. In order the check the compliance with these eligibility criteria, please contact your contact person at ULB-TTO (see details below). The complete F.R.S-FNRS rules for international research projects is available at the following link: https://www.frs-fnrs.be/docs/Reglement-et-documents/International/FRS-FNRS_PINT-Multi.pdf

Requis d'admission

Transnational level

• Only transnational projects will be funded.

• Each consortium must involve at least three partners from three different EU Member States or Associated Countries4 whose funding organisations participate in the call (see list above)

. 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 (i.e. the principal investigator and the applicant’s organisation) 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.

Consortium composition:

• 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 the “Guidelines for Applicants” for individual funding rules).

National/regional level

Applicants must provide basic administrative data by submitting an administrative application on e-space within 5 working days after the general deadline of the call to be eligible. Please select the “PINT-MULTI” funding instrument when creating the administrative application.