The brain is in its complexity the most challenging organ in the human body. It determines our humanity, our thinking and decisions, and motor activity. Despite enormous research efforts and progress in recent years many aspects of its functioning remain to be understood as well as of its dysfunctioning. Consequently, diseases of the brain and nervous system decrease the quality of life of those afflicted by them, their families and carers. In numbers, more than 380 million patients in Europe alone suffer from neurological and mental disorders. Diseases of the brain and nervous system represent not only a major societal but also an economic burden, causing costs of more than 800 billion euros per year in the EU. The neurological disorders included in the Global Burden of Disease Study of 2015 caused over 9 million deaths, comprising 17% of global deaths. As measured in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYS), neurological and mental disorders accounted for 413.1 million DALYs globally, by far exceeding those from cancer (209.4 million) or cardio-vascular disease (228.9 million, without stroke). Trends are increasing, mostly due to aging populations (Eur. J. Neuropsychopharm. 2011, 21:718; Lancet Neurol. 2017, 17:877).
Tackling an issue of such magnitude requires concerted action and collaboration between all relevant key players at all levels. Research into the brain, nervous system and their diseases, greatly benefits from an interdisciplinary approach of excellent European and international research groups. The European Commission invested in its current framework programme, Horizon 2020 from 2014 to 2020, more than 3 billion euros in research on the brain and nervous system at European and international levels.
Research into the diseases of the brain benefits from joint funding schemes by networks of funding agencies and ministries in Europe and beyond the European borders. The ERA-Net NEURON, as a funding platform focused on brain-related diseases and disorders of the nervous system, holds a strategic position in bringing pre-clinical and clinical research communities closer together and fostering translational research, while covering the entire value chain. Based on its Strategic Research Agenda, NEURON pursues a unique funding programme addressing a variety of disorders, neurological, mental, and sensory organ-related. Since 2008, overall 31 funders from 23 countries in the network mobilized 136 million euros for collaborative grant awards to around 655 Principal Investigators (PIs) in over 150 consortia. As evident from the name of the ERA-Net, the scope of NEURON is broad. It covers the entire value chain and ranges from pre-clinical studies to clinical trials, as well as prevention or rehabilitation studies. Similarly, the calls tackle a variety of disorders. The majority of NEURON-funded projects address the area of mental health, e.g. depression, schizophrenia, autism. However, neurological disorders, e.g. Traumatic Brain Injury, epilepsy or stroke, are also well represented among funded projects and the joint transnational calls (JTCs) for proposals often cover topics across disease areas.
