In this issue

	Upcoming Events
	Long-term European networking of Research activities through ERA-NETs in the Health theme

	Third call in the HEALTH theme expected for 2008
	First Call of the IMI Technology Platform

	PathoGenoMics PhD and Communication Awards
	EUROTRANS-BIO's 3rd Transnational Call is open

See all Open Partner Searches at one glance!

	Innovative Medicines Initiative: 6 Research Areas for the First Call
	13 November 2007: outcome of the public consultation

Czech Experience from the 1st Call, Priority Health, FP7

Project coordinator is
FFG-Austrian Research Promotion Agency
European and International Programmes.

SMEs go Health is an SSA co-funded by the European Commission under FP6, grouping 29 expert organisations in Europe to support successful SMEs' participation in FP7.

www.smesgohealth.org

A calendar of events is available on our website www.smesgohealth.org

December 2007

11/12 : EBN Technical Seminar Building EC Projects (Belgium).

January 2008

28/1 : The 5th Congress of the Federation of the Israel Societies for
    Experimental Biology – FISEB (ILANIT) (Israel).

31/1 : The First International Symposium on Human Embryonic
    Stem Cell research (France).

February 2008

2/2 : IGBF 4 Conference and exhibition (Greece).

March 2008

10/3 : World Health Care Congress Europe 2008(Germany).

April 2008

4/4 : Fifth International Congress on FMF and Systemic Autoinflammatory Diseases (Italy).

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Long-term European Networking, Cooperation and Coordination of Research activities through ERA-NETs

The objective of the ERA-NET scheme is to promote cooperation and coordination of research activities carried out at national or regional level in the Member States and Associated Countries through networking and the mutual opening of national and regional research programmes. The scheme will contribute to the realization of the European Research Area (ERA) by improving the coherence and coordination across Europe of national and regional research programmes. The scheme will also enable national systems to take on tasks collectively that they would not have been able to tackle independently.
Both networking and mutual opening require a progressive approach. The ERA-NET scheme therefore has a long-term perspective that must also allow for the different ways that research is organised in different Member States and Associated Countries.

There are 11 ongoing ERA-NET projects which relate to the Health Theme.

In particular they target:

1. Ageing (ERA AGE)
2. Health emergency (HESCULAEP)
3. Organ donation and transplantation (ALLIANCE-O)
4. Genomics of human pathogenic microorganisms (PathoGenoMics)
5. System biology and genomics (ERA-SysBio)
6. Guidelines on cancer best clinical practice (CoCanCPG)
7. Medicines for children (PRIOMEDCHILD)
8. Rare disease (E-RARE)
9. Neurosciences (NEURON)
10. New and emerging risks in occupational safety and health (NEW OSH ERA)
11. Trans-national R&D co-operations in the biotech sector (EUROTRANS-BIO)

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OPEN CALLS & PARTNER SEARCHES

Third call in the HEALTH theme expected for 2008

The third Call for proposals of the FP7 HEALTH theme is expected to be published in spring 2008. Information about the Work Programme, the topics and the call deadline will be published on our website (www.smesgohealth.org) as soon as it is publicly available.
In the meantime, make sure you have an updated profile in our database and feel free to use our Match-making facilities in a proactive way. The specific call topics for the 3rd call will only be available in beginning of 2008, in the meantime you can select 5 items among the current generic themes of the programme at http://www.smesgohealth.org/common/Search.asp.

First Call of the IMI Technology Platform

A Call for Proposals is expected to be issued in January 2008 by the European Technology Platform “Innovative Medicines Initiative” (IMI), a Public-Private Partnership involving the pharmaceutical industry represented by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and the European Commission. Research activities are to be performed through collaborative projects following the call and peer review, with all non-profit research organisations and
SMEs eligible for Community support. More information is brought to you later on in this Newsletter.

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OPEN ERA-NET CALLS:

PathoGenoMics PhD and Communication Awards

ERA-NET PathoGenoMics (The Trans-European Cooperation and Coordination of Genome Sequencing and Functional Genomics of Human-pathogenic Micro-organisms) has been set up to establish sustained co-operation between national funding bodies and to co-ordinate their genome-based research programmes on human-pathogenic microorganisms. Info at www.pathogenomics-era.net

The 10 European PathoGenoMics partner countries will issue the third PhD Award
to recognize the three most remarkable and outstanding PhD theses in the field of genome research on human-pathogenic microorganisms (except viruses). The PhD theses should have been completed in the year 2007 in the ERA-NET PathoGenoMics partner countries. Deadline: 28/02/08. Read more here

ERA-NET PathoGenoMics announces a Communication Award to make scientific knowledge more understandable to the general public. The Award of 2.000 € will be given to scientists or clinicians, engaged in research, who have successfully communicated to the general public scientific issues concerning genomic aspects of disease-causing bacteria and fungi. Deadline: 01/03/08. Read more here

EUROTRANS-BIO’s 3rd Transnational Call is open

EUROTRANS-BIO gathers biotechnology R&D funding programmes from 9 countries/regions: Austria, Basque Country (Spain), Flanders (Belgium), Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain.

EUROTRANS-BIO’s objective is to foster economic and academic biotech players in sharing risks, costs and skills related to innovation in order to develop new products, technologies or supply services that could reach the market more efficiently.

The ETB call 2007 is a generic call including all fields of biotechnology: red, green, grey/white and blue biotechnology Deadline: 15/02/08.
Read more at: www.eurotransbio.net

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NEW PROFILES

See all Open Partner Searches at one glance!

You can find all the partner searches that are currently open in the “SMEs go Health” database in one place! This is a very interesting new feature available on our website that allows you to easily find what are the expertises needed to complete consortia preparing to submit a project proposal in the “Health”-Theme of FP7.

You can look at the list without registration. In order to get further details on the partner searches that interest you, go to > More information and log in to the service. In case you are not registered yet, you can easily do it here.

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Innovative Medicines Initiative: 6 Research Areas for the First Call

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is taking shape: about twenty topics belonging to six thematic areas available for funding in the first IMI call will be informally presented at the next “IMI Member States Contact Group Meeting” in Brussels on November 27th, 2007. The official publication of the call is expected for January 2008. It will be a two-stage call, the deadline of the first stage being envisioned for April 2008. As presented by the European Commission at the “IMI National Platform Day” in Madrid on October 10th, 2007, the 20 topics of the first call will be derived from the following 6 thematic areas:

1. Translational biomarkers for brain disorders
2. Islet cell function and vascular complications of diabetes
3. Predictive toxicology
4. COPD and asthma
5. Pharmacovigilance
6. Education and training in various disciplines.

With the aim to reduce bottlenecks and weaknesses in the development of new drugs and therapies, thereby strengthening the competitiveness of the European pharma-industry, IMI was established as a Technology Platform by the European Commission (DG Research) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries (EFPIA) in 2004. Read more

13 November 2007: outcome of the public consultation

In July 2007, the European Commission launched a public consultation on the future of pharmaceuticals for human use in Europe. The consultation ended on 12 October 2007. You can find all public contributions to this consultation here.

A Summary of all contributions will be published soon.

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Czech Experience from the 1st Call, Priority Health, FP7

The Czech team of the Institute of Pharmacology of the Faculty of Medicine, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic, submitted a project proposal to the FP7 topic in the first HEALTH Call “2007 – 1.3.5: In silico modelling for ADMET outcomes”. Unfortunately, the consortium of 10 members with a coordinator from Finland did not succeed in the evaluation procedure. The head of the Czech team, Prof. Pavel Anzenbacher kindly answered our questions regarding the identification of possible reasons for not getting funded. He also gave some recommendations for other submitters of how to be able to turn an unsuccessful proposal into a lesson and enhance the future chances of success.

Read more

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Newsletter by EuroTop.