Trans-national Access Call: COVID-19 Therapeutics Pipeline
With more than 1.5 million deaths by the end of 2020 and no signs of slowing down, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the deadliest diseases to plague mankind in recent times. Considerable scientific effort from all over the world has been rallied to fight this common foe.
With this free-of-charge TA Call `COVID-19 Therapeutics Pipelineยด, INFRAFRONTIER is providing researchers access to test their innovative and novel COVID-19 therapeutics in a standardised infection pipeline that uses preclinical models to study COVID-19 infection.
Application form: Interested research teams are requested to fill in the application form and send it to proposals@infrafrontier.eu
Context and aims of the call
Main objective of this INFRAFRONTIER2020 Trans-national Access Call is to provide extensive user support to the selected projects for assessing novel potential vaccine and treatment compounds for COVID-19. As starting material for the TA service, only sufficient amounts of the therapeutic candidate and desired mode of administration will be provided by the TA call users. It will be incumbent upon users to provide these materials and information.
Viral particles, COVID-19 mouse models, cohort production and BSL3 pipeline analysis will be provided by INFRAFRONTIER partners - CIPHE and CCP. Further functional analysis and advanced readouts like organ histopathological analysis, multiplex assay profiling of cytokines and chemokines in lung and mouse serum etc. can be provided on a collaborative basis outside the scope of this TA call. A final infection profile report will be provided as a deliverable.
TA activities provide trans-national access to researchers or research teams to one or more infrastructures among those operated by INFRAFRONTIER partners. These access activities are implemented in a coordinated way such as to improve the overall services available to the research community. Access is made available to external users, either in person ('hands-on') or through the provision of remote scientific services, such as the provision of reference materials or samples or analysis of samples.
Proposals for this Trans-national Access call can be submitted from non-commercial applicants around the world. Only 20% of the access units will be allocated to users that are not EU-member states or EU-associated states.
This TA service is covered by the INFRAFRONTIER2020 project (Horizon 2020). The conditions for free access are 1) the user must work in an institution of a EU-Member State or EU-Associated State, 20% of access units will be allocated to international users, and 2) the user must be selected by the INFRAFRONTIER Evaluation Committee.
The access to the COVID-19 therapeutic pipeline service is free-of-charge. However, the shipment of the therapeutic compound to CIPHE must be borne by the applicants.
Submitted project proposals will be collected and passed on by the INFRAFRONTIER2020 Project Office to members of the external Evaluation Committee. All members of the Evaluation Committee signed a confidentiality agreement.
Proposals from eligible customers for free-of-charge access to the INFRAFRONTIER2020 COVID-19 Therapeutics Pipeline Service will be subject to a review procedure. A mixed panel of INFRAFRONTIER members and an external Evaluation Committee will assess service requests supported by the TA activity. In addition to scientific merit of applicants, relevance and quality of preliminary data, soundness of the proposal and research plans will be assessed. Additionally, experts of CIPHE/CCP will assess the technical feasibility of projects. The technical evaluation of projects may require the provision of additional data.
Applicants will be informed on the outcome of the evaluation within 6 weeks after the end of the call for which the TA application was submitted. All applications will be handled with strict confidentiality.
Application form: Please fill in the application form and send it to proposals@infrafrontier.eu
Application deadline: 31 January 2021
Application costs: This TA Call is free-of-charge for the selected applicants.
Please contact info@infrafrontier.eu if you have any questions.