ERDERA

PROGRAMME SUMMARY

The European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA) has been established to further help in coordinating the research efforts of European, Associated and non-European countries in the field of rare diseases and implement the objectives of the International Rare Disease Research Consortium (IRDiRC). These actions follow the five Joint Transnational Calls for rare diseases research projects launched previously by the European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD) since 2019.   The call will open on 10 December 2025.

Read more on erdera.org

Aim of the Call

The aim of the call is to tackle RD patient-need led challenges and enable scientists to build, based on common interests and sharing of expertise, effective, multinational, interdisciplinary research collaborations. The expected impact lies in the future translation and use of the results to the benefit of patients.

The classification of RDs follows the European definition, i.e. a disease affecting not more than five in 10.000 persons in the European Community, EC associated states, and Canada.

Accurately diagnosing RDs is a major challenge, with approximately 50% of individuals with a suspected of having rare genetic condition remaining undiagnosed or misdiagnosed despite standard clinical genetics care. In addition, RDs of non-genetic origin – estimated to account for about 10% of all RD cases – remain an under-investigated area. On average, it takes around 5 years to establish an accurate diagnosis for people living with a RD (PLWRD). Given the complexity of these disorders, multiple and complementary diagnostic approaches are required. These unmet needs and challenges underpin the objectives of this call.

Topics list

The goal of this call is to solve Undiagnosed Rare Genetic diseases and to address complex, multifactorial Rare Non-Genetic diseases by identifying causative variants in patients with no molecular diagnosis after prior genetic or genomic testing and providing diagnostic clarity for conditions of unknown or mixed pathogenesis.

Suggested focus areas are:
Functional validation to classify variants of uncertain significance (VUS) and increase the diversity of functional genomics research, or validation of candidate VUS to improve outcomes for a broader range of patients using in silico, in vitro or animal model systems (e.g. CRISPR modified cells, iPSCs, organoids, etc.);
Use of multi-omics or integrative methods (e.g. transcriptomics, epigenomics, etc.) to resolve ambiguous or complex variants;
New tools/methodologies not yet validated in clinical settings, including biostatistics, advanced bioinformatics, and mathematics approaches (e.g. variant effect predictors, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based annotation platforms, etc.);
Systems biology and disease mechanism modelling;
Integration of clinical, environmental, lifestyle, and sensor-derived data;
Development of knowledge graphs or disease maps to link phenotypic and mechanistic insights;
Use of advanced AI and modelling tools (graph ML, probabilistic causal models).

Excluded approaches and topics

The following diseases, approaches and topics are excluded from the scope of the JTC 2026:

Pre-clinical therapy development studies as covered in ERDERA JTC2025 topic;
Interventional clinical trials to prove efficacy of drugs/treatments/surgical procedures/medical procedures. This includes studies comparing efficacy, e.g., two surgical techniques or therapies, and projects whose main objective is the implementation of a clinical phase IV pharmacovigilance study;
Projects focusing only on rare diseases that are within the focus of Brain Health Partnership (https://www.brainhealth-partnership.eu/jtcs-2026/). These are: Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias; Parkinson’s disease (PD) and PD-related disorders; prion diseases; motor neuron diseases; Huntington’s disease; spinal muscular atrophy and dominant forms of spinocerebellar ataxia. However, childhood dementias/neurodegenerative diseases are eligible;
Rare infectious diseases, rare cancers and rare adverse drug events in treatments of common diseases. Rare diseases with a predisposition to cancer are eligible. Therefore, diseases with inborn errors of immunity/genetic predisposition to rare infectious diseases are eligible.

FUNDING SPECIFICS

The FNR supports Luxembourg partners in this Call with a maximum of 300,000 EUR.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Submission

Both pre- and full proposals must be written in English and must be submitted to the Joint Call Secretariat (JCS) by the coordinator through the electronic submission system exclusively. Specific information to follow.

In addition, Luxembourg partners must submit both pre and full proposals, along with the FNR INTER Call documents to the FNR no later than 7 working days after the EJP-RD deadline. Applications to the FNR must be submitted via the FNR’s Online Grant Management System.

Call timeline