The EU Commission will fund 11 new projects to address coronavirus and its variants

The European Commission has announced the eleven preselected projects to tackle coronavirus and its variants, with total funding of €120 million.

They involve 312 research teams from 40 countries, including 38 participants from 23 non-EU countries.

The funded projects will support clinical trials for new treatments and vaccines. In addition, they will assist in the development of large-scale COVID-19 cohorts and networks beyond the borders of Europe.

In addition, they will strengthen and expand access to research infrastructures, such as the European COVID-19 Data Platform and relevant European life sciences research infrastructures.

The successful consortia will collaborate with other relevant initiatives and projects at national, regional, and international level to maximise synergies and complementarity and avoid duplication of the research efforts. They will contribute to building the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which will enable the EU to anticipate and better tackle future pandemics.

Research funding

This funding comes from Horizon Europe, Europe’s largest research and innovation programme (2021-2027), and is part of the research and innovation actions that the Commission has taken to fight the coronavirus.

In February, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the start of a European bio-defence preparedness plan HERA Incubator aimed at preparing Europe for an increased threat of coronavirus variants.

In April, the Commission announced the new calls for urgent research into coronavirus variants with an initial budget of €123 million mobilised as part of the first emergency funding under Horizon Europe.

Funding for these 11 projects is conditional on a final Commission decision, and the signature of the Horizon Europe Grant Agreements in the coming months, but the research teams can already start their work.

Spanish leadership

The project “RBD Dimer recombinant protein vaccine against SARSCoV2” (RBDCOV) one of the initially selected projects is led by the Spanish entity Hipra, and from Zabala Innovation we are grateful and proud to be able to participate in such an interesting challenge as the one posed by this new project.