Ebola and other filoviral haemorrhagic fevers (Ebola+) programme: future outbreaks

This Call provides an opportunity to capture emerging scientific advances and to progress those rapidly into health care interventions. Proposals may address aspects of pre-clinical development and/or Phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical developments of vaccines (in particular multivalent), treatments and diagnosis of Ebola or other filovirus infections. Manufacturing strategies, vaccine stability during transport and storage, and/or deployment of vaccines and treatments are also in scope. Proposals for the development of adaptable platforms, which in addition to filoviruses can address multiple other priority pathogens, are also eligible.

The recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa underscores the vulnerability of populations worldwide to pathogens such as filoviral viruses. Currently, there are no vaccines or antiviral drugs approved for prevention or treatment of filoviral infections in humans.

Proposals must contribute to the objectives of IMI2 and in particular to the goals of the Ebola+ programme which is a programmatic approach addressing different challenges across the entire innovation cycle and aims at leveraging input and multidisciplinary expertise across stakeholders.

Specifically, proposals must increase the readiness to respond to future outbreaks of Ebola and other filoviral haemorrhagic fevers.

An important expected impact of projects funded under this Call must be to maximise the benefit to the people in the countries at risk from future outbreaks of filoviral haemorrhagic fevers. In order to achieve this, successful applicant consortia should have the capability to accelerate their project results into health care interventions.

Furthermore, proposals are expected to take advantage of and exploit support from different stakeholders with the necessary expertise, including the mobilization of funds through the inclusion of contributing partners under the IMI scheme of public-private consortia. Such contributing partners might include EFPIA companies or organizations associated to EFPIA, and Associated Partners to IMI. The budgeted cost for the participation of such partners is expected to account for at least 40% of the total project cost.

Projects are expected to have a 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 filoviral diseases or for patients suffering from filoviral disease.