substantially altered personal life styles and ongoing demographic change in many societies of modern industrialized countries have led to an increasing number of citizens who suffer from so-called common and complex diseases. particularly, when it comes to common diseases like cardiovascular, neurological/mental health or metabolic diseases, the resulting socioeconomic impact is immense. over the past several years, human genome research and related omics-approaches have led to a substantially improved knowledge in the field of common and complex human diseases. however, from this understanding it also has become clear that our current knowledge about the etiology and development of complex diseases on the cellular level needs to be extended by more context-related approaches.
in this respect, the newly developed field of health-oriented epigenomics provides a huge potential for a new and more context- and systems-oriented understanding of the cellular regulation in health and disease. epigenetics deals with the highly complex mechanisms within our cells that regulate the activity of our genes. given the highly specialised function of most of our cells, only a limited number of genes - in a context dependent manner - are switched on in a certain cell type and under certain conditions. this activation is highly regulated by epigenetic processes which can confer information brought about by external factors such as environmental impacts, nutrition or cellular stress. epigenomics is the high-throughput research approach which investigates a wide range of epigenetic factors on a general, systematic level. epigenomics is a demanding field, both in terms of research infrastructure and scientific expertise. a substantially improved understanding of human epigenetic mechanisms and processes that lead to common and complex diseases will pave the way for novel approaches in prevention, diagnosis and therapy.
as a result of the level of complexity, epigenomics calls for international cooperation that can pool resources and generate "critical masses" of research capacities and competencies. the agence nationale de la recherche (anr), the bundesministerium für bildung und forschung (bmbf) and the canadian institutes of health research (cihr) together with the fonds de recherche du québec - santé (frqs), decided to join forces in a multilateral joint transnational call for proposals to support epigenomics of common and complex diseases. the aim of this joint call is to promote and create strategic synergy and multidisciplinary research activities between scientists in france, germany and canada at a high level. the multilateral joint transnational call will foster the identification and characterization of epigenomic mechanisms relevant for complex diseases and open new routes for prevention, diagnosis and therapy. the multilateral joint transnational call will be published on the french national research agency website.
funds available
cihr and partner(s) financial contributions for this initiative are subject to availability of funds. should cihr or partner(s) funding levels not be available or are decreased due to unforeseen circumstances, cihr and partner(s) reserve the right to reduce, defer or suspend financial contributions to grants received as a result of this funding opportunity.
- each funding partner will fund the research component performed by researchers associated with institutions within their respective jurisdiction, according to their standard terms and conditions. the total amount available for canadian funds in this funding opportunity call are: cihr ca$2,300,000, frqs ca$500,000, enough to fund approximately 4-6 teams.
- the maximum amount for the research component performed and supported in canada, per team, is $200,000/year for up to 3 years (i.e., $600,000 total over 3 years). of this amount, the maximum contribution per team for frqs in canada is $250,000 over 3 years.