In-silico trials for developing and assessing biomedical products

Main pillar: 

  • Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing

Currency: 

Euro

Call deadline: 

Tue, 14 Mar 2017

Statut: 

  • Forthcoming

Description: 

Scope:Proposals will develop innovative in-silico trials for designing, developing and assessing drugs, radiation and other biomedical and bioactive products. They will build on comprehensive biological and biomedical knowledge management and advanced modelling paradigms in order to be able to simulate the individual human physiology and physiopathology at the biological levels relevant for the biomedical product under study (at the cell level, tissue level or organism level) and the interaction with the product, thus taking into account the variability among individuals (for example, molecular pathways, cellular microenvironments, microbiota, genetics, gender characteristics, behaviours, comorbidities, development, diet). Virtual populations of individual patients will be built for simple or composite diseases, for example, from the patient-specific models by variations of different parameters and will allow simulating the action of the products and predicting the treatments outcomes in order to develop a personalised medicine approach. The proposed in-silico trials will be the result of a multidisciplinary effort (e.g. within the fields of computational modelling, systems biology, tissue mechanics, biology, pharmaceutics, medicine) and will also explore and inform of the reasons of fails and suggest improvements. To help establishing such computer simulated trials, measures for validation (human trials, animal studies, validation in cell cultures) of the in-silico models shall also be included in the proposed projects. The benefit for human health, environment and animal welfare should be analysed and quantified. Contact with regulators and consideration of the regulatory framework issues are highly recommended.The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.Expected Impact:

  • Reducing the size and the duration of the human clinical trials
  • A more effective human clinical trials design
  • Leading to a significant reduction of animal testing
  • Innovative medical products on the market with lower development costs and/or shorter time-to-market
  • Improving prediction of human risks for new biomedical products including medical foods
  • Improving drug repositioning
  • Potential of re-use of the developed in-silico models in the chemical testing.
  • Setting standards for in-silico trials.
  • Providing libraries of virtual patients that can be re-used in pre- and post-competitive testing of biomedical products