Posted: April 23, 2009

Call for proposals for European nanotechnology projects applied to health

(Nanowerk News) Nanotechnology applied to health is a strategic priority for Europe because the technologies related to this sector have a vast potential for developing public welfare and economic growth, changing the way of life of citizens.
Critical issues to bring up the potential in Europe concern especially the maturity of the economic players and their capability to move effectively innovation from knowledge to industrial technology and to clinical applications.
In this context, as a result of the commitment of European member states and regions to support together trans-national RTD projects among industry, academic and clinical stakeholders the EuroNanoMed ERA-Net initiative was created. The partners decided to coordinate their respective national or regional publicly funded programmes in the field of nanomedicine.
The EuroNanoMed project is aimed at fostering the competitiveness of European Nanomedicine actors through the support to trans-national collaborative RTD projects between academic laboratories, companies, especially SME’s, and clinicians/public health setting, in the field of Nanomedicine, using a bottom up approach.
To reach such a goal a first joint call for proposals open to all the key players will be launched mid-may 2009. It will be open to all the key players in each of the 18 partner regions/countries. The thematic priorities of the call will focus on the strategic research priorities of the European technology platform “Nanomedicine”: diagnostics, targeted delivery and regenerative medicine. The financial resources available for the call are allocated by the partners who will commit for the call approximately 15-20% of the sum of their national/regional Nanomedicine budgets.
Complete information about the call, the funding resources, the topics and the submission and selection procedures will be presented at a press conference today, April 23 in Brussels, Veneto Region Office – 67, Av. De Tervueren, 1040 Brussels from 11.30 – 13.00.
During the press conference the policy of DG RTD on future of Nanomedicine in Europe will be presented by Mr. TOKAMANIS (Head of Unit Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies, EC) as well as the expectation on the development of the EuroNanoMed project will be discussed.
EuroNanoMed will develop coordinated European-wide programmes based on 2 common joint trans-national calls and funding: this is the launch of the first call.
We will post details about the call here on Nanowerk as soon as available.
Source: EuroNanoMed