As part of the 28.5 million euros 10-year programme announced in April 2023 in pursuance of the Dutch Minister of Medical Care and Sport, Tamara van Ark’s, 2021 direction to ZonMw to carry out a biomedical research programme on ME/CFS a new Call has been made by the Netherlands research body for applications centred on clinical research into promising medicines for people with ME/CFS in the kingdom. The total budget available is c €3,500,000 and for this call, and there are no restrictions on the total amount of funding requested per project. The target amount for an application is reportedly between €600,000 and €1,000,000 per project.
Applications are being accepted until 17 March 2026 with projects having to begin prior to August 2027 and must last no longer than 4 years
The Call is specifically aimed at drug repurposing or rediscovery and concerns projects focused on clinical research into the effectiveness of an existing medicine (off-patent, available in the Netherlands). Applications can be for either “Proof of concept (PoC) studies” or “Clinical validation studies”.
It will be recalled that announcements have already been made on the funding of two consortia and a number of sub-projects but it is worthwhile to look at the bigger picture of what is in train in the Netherlands in comparison to the paucity of action in the UK.
