Home > Granted research > 2019 – 11th Call for Projects: Selected Projects

The Thierry Latran Foundation 11th Call for projects  opened in October 2018

The Thierry Latran Foundation was established in 2008 to a) finance basic, applied and clinical research with potential therapeutic benefit in sporadic ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and b) to support academic and industrial scientific research efforts in Europe to cure this disease.

The Foundation has enabled to reach significant milestones in terms of understanding ALS disease mechanisms and developments. After having paved the way for such progress, the Foundation have, for this Call, focussed on on-going most promising therapeutic targets, to validate or invalidate them.

The Thierry Latran Foundation  opened  its 11th call for projects for a total amount up to € 800 000.

Scientific themes were  

Applicants are encouraged to submit projects that bring results closer to therapeutic or diagnostic valorisation.

Eligibility criteria were

  • Researcher with a position within an institution for the duration of the project
  • Teams based in EU-member states or in a country belonging to the Horizon 2020 Third Country Agreements (Iceland, Norway, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Israel, Moldova, Switzerland, Faroe Islands, Ukraine, Tunisia, Georgia, Armenia)
  • Applications involving a single or several European research teams
  • Applications from public, private and for-profit institutions
  • Compliance to Thierry Latran Foundation call for project policy
  • Principal Investigator can reapply for funding in the year he has to present the final report

We received 75 abstracts coming from 12 different countries

 Since inception, 852 projects were submitted to the Foundation.

 Selection process:

Each Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), assessed independently the abstracts taking into account their scientific quality and their relevance to the objectives of the Foundation. During the process, the members of the Scientific Committee with a conflict of interest did participate neither to assessment nor to discussion.

These assessments have been consolidated and anonymized. A meeting of the Scientific Committee was held in March 2017 for selection, validated by the Foundation. 13 projects were selected for full application.

Each of the 13 projects was analyzed by 2 different ‘referees’, specialized on the theme of the project and having no connection with the applicants.  The members of the Scientific Committee met in Tours in June to assess the projects on the basis of the opinion of the “referees” and to classify them into 3 groups A (strong recommendation for funding) B (projects recommended to be financed according to the available budget) and C (projects not recommended for funding). The SAB’s recommendations were presented to the Executive Committee in June 2019.

At the end of the process four projects were selected, meeting the selection criteria i.e. scientific excellence and contribution to the development of a diagnostic tool or a therapy.

Project 1 : GeneTherC9 :  Maria Grazia Biferi, Center of Resarch in Myology, University of Sorbonne, Inserm, Paris, France

1. GeneTherC9

Project 2: HypothALS, Luc Dupuis, Inserm, University of Strasbourg, France

2. HypothALS

Project 3 : NETWORKALS,  Orla Hardiman, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland

3. NETWORKALS

Project 4 : HDACALS, Ludo Van Den Bosch, Experimental Neurology (KU Leuven) and Center for Brain & Disease Research (VIB), Belgium

4. HDACALS

 

The Thierry Latran Foundation is extremely grateful  to the Scientific Advisory Board who performed the selection

Pr Albert Ludolph (Ulm University, Germany) (President)

Dr Séverine Boillée (Brain and Spine Institute, ICM, Paris, France)

Pr Adriano Chio (University of Torino, Italy)  

Dr Jan Egebjerg (Lundbeck Foundation, Copenhagen, Denmark)

Pr Linda Greensmith (University College of London, UK)

Pr Eva Hedlund (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden)

Pr Philip Van Damme (KU Leuven, Belgium)

and to Elke Bogaert , SAB secretary  who drove the process.