LS25 / Scope of the call

This “Precision Medicine” call is issued within the WWTF Life Sciences Programme. This call is open to research projects that draw upon precision medicine approaches to improve prevention, diagnosis or treatment of a human disease.

Please consider the following key requirements regarding scope of projects in this call:

• Projects should advance understanding of a clinically relevant research question by contributing to, or utilising, insights based on high-quality datasets from well-defined patient cohorts.
• Anticipated research outcomes should have clear implications for improving the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of a human disease.
• Projects should contribute to understanding of disease pathogenesis or treatment-relevant biological mechanisms.
• Research teams should demonstrate interdisciplinarity across clinical, biological, data analysis and/or engineering expertise.
• Consideration of the role of sex and gender in the development and treatment of diseases is essential.
  

Within the domain of precision medicine, this call is open to projects with diverse aims and methodologies. The following research directions are considered within the scope of this call. Please note that this is not a comprehensive overview and that all projects must demonstrate fulfilment of the above key requirements.

• Projects may aim to develop novel targeted therapies based upon understanding of disease pathogenesis and patient heterogeneity.
• Projects may involve the development of novel preclinical models based on patient cohort data to improve understanding of the pathogenesis and/or treatment outcome of a human disease.
• Projects may focus on understanding disease susceptibility in heterogeneous populations and seek to contribute to the development of targeted preventive interventions.
• New patient datasets may be generated or assembled as part of the project, or projects may draw on existing datasets. Should new datasets be generated, demonstration of access to well-characterised cohorts and feasibility of attaining the required ethical approvals in a timely manner will be required. Please see the requirements in this call regarding ethical approvals.
  

Please note that the following types of projects are deemed to be outside the scope of this call:

• Public health studies that do not contribute to mechanistic understanding of a disease or therapeutic treatment.
• Basic biomedical research and technology development in the absence of specific clinical rationale and implications.
• Clinical trials of medicinal products.