Description

ERDERA, the European Rare Diseases Research Alliance, launches its 2026 Joint Transnational Call to support multinational, interdisciplinary consortia aiming to provide diagnostic clarity for unsolved rare genetic and non-genetic diseases. The call seeks projects that combine clinical data, advanced genomics, multi-omics, functional variant validation, bioinformatics/AI methodologies, systems biology and integrative approaches to identify causative variants or shed light on conditions of unknown or mixed pathogenesis. Projects may include functional genomics, modelling (e.g. organoids, iPSC), multi-omics, advanced computational analyses, disease-mechanism modelling, and data integration (e.g. clinical, environmental, lifestyle, sensor-derived). The call excludes purely pre-clinical therapy development studies and interventional clinical trials. The submission uses a two-stage procedure (pre-proposal → full-proposal).

Objectives
To solve undiagnosed rare disease cases by combining expertise across countries and disciplines, delivering diagnostic clarity and building foundations for future translational or clinical follow-up.

Eligibility / Requirements

• Eligible applicants: Academia (universities, research institutes), clinical/public-health sector (hospitals or similar health organisations), enterprises of any size (SMEs encouraged), and patient advocacy organisations (PAOs). 

• Each consortium must include 4 to 6 eligible principal-investigator partners from at least four different participating countries (with maximum two partners per country). In some cases consortia may extend to up to 8 partners especially when including underrepresented countries (UC) or early-career researchers (ECR) under specific conditions.

• Patient organisations (PAOs) involvement from the start is highly desirable - patient partners may be funded or unfunded; they do not count toward the partner limit. 

• Collaborators and subcontractors are allowed, but collaborators (with their own funding) or subcontractors do not count toward the limit of funded partners; their role must be clearly described.

• The call excludes: pre-clinical therapy development (as covered in ERDERA JTC2025 topics), interventional clinical trials (e.g. drug efficacy testing, surgical comparisons, phase IV pharmacovigilance), rare cancers, rare infectious diseases, rare adverse drug events from treatment of common diseases. However, rare diseases with genetic predisposition to infection, or inborn errors of immunity, and rare diseases with predisposition to cancer are eligible. Childhood dementias and neurodegenerative diseases are eligible (even if adult dementias are excluded)

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