Aim of the Call:

TC2018 aims at enabling Early Career Scientists (for definition please see chapter 3.2) in different  countries  to  build  an  effective  collaboration  on  common  multidisciplinary  research  projects. The consortia should be based on complementarities and sharing of expertise in the field of cardiovascular disease, with  a  clear  translational  research  approach. The  call  aims  to  promote  cooperation  and  interchange  between  Early  Career  Scientists  and  thus  enable  international collaboration and new consortia establishment in cardiovascular research. Cardiovascular disease research can comprise hypertensive, ischaemic, pulmonary heart diseases and diseases  of  pulmonary  circulation,  other  forms  of  heart  disease,  diseases  of  arteries,  arterioles  and  capillaries and congenital malformations of cardiac chambers and connections and cardiac septa (analogues to ICD-10). The opportunity to independently develop and perform highly innovative research projects enables capacity building and empowering of Early Career Scientists. The  ERA-CVD funding  organizations  particularly  wish  to  promote  multi-disciplinary  work  and  translational  research  proposals. The  individual  components  of  joint  applications  should  be complementary  and  contain  novel,  ambitious  ideas  to  answer  key  questions  or  lead  to  a  step wise change in understanding of cardiovascular diseases. There should be a clear added value in funding the collaboration over individual projects by sharing of resources (models, databases, diagnosis etc.), harmonisation of data, sharing of specific know-how and/or innovative technologies, etc. The research proposals should be built on an effective collaboration between the different research participants from different countries. Each transnational consortium should represent the critical mass necessary to achieve ambitious scientific goals. Applicants are encouraged to demonstrate engagement with clinics, patient organisations and small and medium-size enterprises (SME) for their active participation including sharing of resources, capabilities and expertise in order to ensure an efficient transfer of pre-clinical results into clinical utility. Research proposals should consider the following cross-sectional aspects:

• Interdisciplinary approach, e.g.  integrating  biomedicine,  physics,  chemistry,  mathematics, informatics, systems  biology  and  clinical  medicine  for  the  development  of  the  applications;

•Research on sex/gender differences in order to give further mechanistic insights into the  development  of  the  disease,  its  progression  and  to  identify  difference  in  treatment  responses;

•Translational research approach or perspective.

The following types of research projects are excluded from the call:

•Interventional clinical trials;

•Building up of new cohorts, registries and/or biomaterial banks;

•Cerebrovascular and rheumatic diseases;

•Research that primarily leads to cardiovascular risk management.  Risk management is understood as long-term health improvement and/or CAD prevention;

•Conducting screenings.