Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Department of Biotechnology -DBT India announce a joint call for collaborative research proposals in late autumn 2012 with a closing date in March 2013. This will be a joint BBSRC-DBT call for collaborative proposals following a successful joint Livestock Disease and Health workshop, held in New Delhi in February 2012.
The call will be to support research aimed at novel underpinning control measures and technologies to combat infectious diseases of farmed animals (ruminants, pigs, poultry, and farmed fish) and improve their health.The major objective of this pre-announcement is to allow eligible investigators within the UK and India to begin the process of identifying potential project partners with a view to assembling multi-disciplinary teams comprising, as a minimum, one eligible partner from each country and demonstrating a significant level of collaboration.
Working with industrial partners will be strongly encouraged, where relevant to the research; however, neither BBSRC nor DBT will provide funding for such collaborators.Such partnerships will be welcome provided they come with contribution in kind
BBSRC and DBT have earmarked up to £5M each for this call.Projects should be up to a maximum duration of three years; whilst no upper cost limit per project is stipulated, funders envisage funding multiple projects under this call.The diseases investigated in this programme must currently have strong economic and social impact (livelihood, trade, food security).The scale and extent of the impacts of the disease to be studied and the potential of the research to address those impacts will be an important criterion in the assessment of research proposals.
The call for proposals will be emphasized around three priority areas and two underpinning, cross-cutting themes identified at the workshop.
Priority areas
- New generation vaccines
- Research needs to include:
- Using genomic and proteomic approaches to design novel vaccines including thermostable, DNA and DIVA vaccines
- Novel vaccine vectors and novel and easy-to-use delivery systems
- Long lasting vaccines that induce an early onset of immunity (e.g. for emergency vaccination)
- Multivalent vaccines to reduce the number of inoculations
- Genetics of host disease resistance
Research needs to include:
- Understanding molecular basis and mechanisms of genetic resistance to disease
- Understanding species and strain difference in disease resistance and distinguishing resistant genotypes
- Technologies that enable creation and/or exploitation of resistant phenotypes and biomarker discovery
- Novel diagnostic tools
Research is needed to develop:
- Novel and effective tools, especially to monitor epidemiology of disease for use in the field and regional laboratories to support clinical suspicion of disease
- Rapid and sensitive methods for differential diagnosis (DIVA diagnostics – parallel development of vaccine and test)
- Multiple diagnostic platforms
- Cross-cutting themes
- Epidemiology and modelling
Including:
- Predictive and real-time epidemiological modeling of infectious agents and transmission dynamics
- Conventional, descriptive and molecular epidemiology to map pathogen flows, distribution and diversity
- Long-term studies of epidemiology of multi-species infectious diseases
- Epidemiological studies of risk factors e.g. ecological changes and other socio-economic factors
- Investigating pathogen biology at the molecular level
Applications in priority areas should be able to demonstrate that there is already sufficient information regarding epidemiology and pathogen biology to justify the work that is planned, and applications that focus on a cross-cutting theme should indicate how the information they generate would facilitate work on the priority areas.
Eligibility:
Standard BBSRC and DBT eligibility guidelines will apply, any potential applicants who are unsure whether they and/or their institution meets the relevant eligibility criteria are encouraged to contact the BBSRC or DBT office using the contact information below.
For further information, visit the link.
