Seeking proposals to advance the knowledge on COVID-19 and on the coronavirus family

Considering that this is a newly identified virus, the scope of this topic remains broad and must address at least one of the following objectives:

• Development of therapeutics to address a rapid response towards the current COVID-19 outbreak: relevant “clinical ready”-assets include approved therapies or compounds in development, which could be repurposed for use in treating patients with the coronavirus.
• Development of therapeutics to address the current and/or future coronaviruses outbreaks: identification of new potential assets and approaches that could be utilised including preventive strategies and combination approaches and could also address potential resistance. This may also include optimisation of promising treatments used in rapid response (e.g. reformulation).
• Development of diagnostics, ensuring rapid evaluation of candidates based on existing technologies, to allow for fast case detection and surveillance.
• Development of fast and reliable detection of COVID-19 carriers and symptomatic individuals suspected of COVID-19 infection. This can be achieved through point of care (POC) testing or centralised testing.

Please note that preventive vaccines are specifically excluded from the scope of the call.

Expected Impact

Proposals must be timely, with rapid activation, to enable early and valuable outcomes to be established and should contribute to one or more of the following impacts:

• Fast track development and availability of therapeutics and/or diagnostics to be used in the clinical management of patients infected by COVID-19 and/or future outbreaks of coronaviruses, and to ensure that a variety of drugs are available for patients, including tackling resistance, and combination therapy.
• Contribution to the public health preparedness and response in the context of the ongoing epidemic of COVID-19 and/or future outbreaks of pan-coronaviruses.
• Significant impact on global health, both at the individual and the public health level by leading to results that have a direct impact for persons at risk of exposure to coronavirus or for patients suffering from coronavirus disease.

Maximisation of the IMI2 JU public-private partnership value by harnessing support from different stakeholders, including the mobilisation of resources through the inclusion of contributing partners (EFPIA companies or organisations associated to EFPIA, and Associated Partners to IMI2 JU)providing contributions (in kind and/or financial), to reflect the public-private character of IMI2 JU actions.

Topic conditions and documents

Please read carefully all provisions below before the preparation of your application:

The IMI2 JU 21st Call for proposals topic text as well as the Call Conditionsare available here.

Please note IMI2 JU’s corrigendum (dated 5th of March 2020) addressing a clerical error on page 12 of a previous release of the IMI2 JU 21st Call for proposals document and confirming that applicants should submit a proposal with a page limit of 70 pages.