Horizon Europe: urgent calls for research into coronavirus variants

The Commission launched new calls that complement earlier actions to develop treatments and vaccines by organising and conducting clinical trials to advance the development of promising therapeutics and vaccines against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19. They will support the development of large scale, COVID-19 cohorts and networks beyond Europe’s borders, forging links with European initiatives, as well as reinforce the infrastructures needed to share data, expertise, research resources and expert services among researchers and research organisations.

The projects funded are expected to:

• Establish new and/or build on existing large-scale, multi-centre and regional or multinational cohorts, including beyond Europe’s borders, which should rapidly advance the knowledge on SARS-CoV-2 and its emerging variants.
• Further develop promising therapeutic or vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, having already completed preclinical development in clinical studies.
• Support research infrastructures to speed up data sharing and deliver fast research support and expertise, to confront the coronavirus variants and to be ready for future epidemics.

The successful consortia are expected to collaborate with other relevant initiatives and projects at national, regional, and international level to maximise synergies and complementarity and avoid duplication of the research efforts.

Link to the open calls:

• HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CORONA-01-01: Vaccines & therapeutic clinical trials to boost COVID-19 prevention and treatment
• HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CORONA-01-02: Cohorts united against COVID-19 variants of concern
• HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EMERGENCY-01: FAIR and open data sharing in support to European preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases
• HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EMERGENCY-02: Research infrastructure services for rapid research responses to COVID-19 and other infectious disease epidemics

Application deadline: 06 May 2021 17:00 CET

For more information, contact your Health NCP, Emilie Fonck.

Read the press release of the European Commission here.