The "la Caixa" Foundation opens a call for innovative projects related to the coronavirus

The current coronavirus pandemic is ravaging the world and in the search for measures to reverse the situation and fight this and other future plagues, the "la Caixa" Foundation is allocating up to 1.5 million euros to the new express call for proposals of the CaixaImpulse programme, aimed exclusively at projects linked to COVID-19.

The president of the "la Caixa" Banking Foundation, Isidro Fainé, wanted to explain the intention behind the organisation he represents: "We must all contribute to finding solutions to tackle the health and social crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic. With initiatives such as this, we once again reaffirm our commitment to research in order to be able to respond to emergency situations, such as the one we are currently experiencing".

CaixaImpulse COVID-19, launched more than a week ago, has already raised a lot of interest from the scientific community. Research centres, hospitals, universities and foundations in Spain and Portugal interested in participating can submit their proposals until 15 April.

Due to the exceptional nature of this call, only clinical projects and initiatives that can be applied for the benefit of society have been accepted that include technologies clearly focused on finding solutions for COVID-19 disease. Projects also had to show preliminary results from previous testing activities, or sufficient scientific evidence of translational capacity.

The studies presented may include prevention plans and tools, deployment of diagnostic or early detection tools, development of new therapies or repositioning of specific treatments, as well as the development of predictive models or emergency management strategies, among others.

Once the projects have been selected, specialised support resources will be made available, with access to mentors and experts, as required for the correct development of the initiatives, as well as financial support, which could be up to 300,000 euros. There will be between three and five projects funded, and this will be established taking into account the evaluators' criteria and the excellence of the projects.
 

The projects submitted will begin a two-stage selection process. In the first phase, a pre-selection of applications based on a letter of intent will be carried out. Initiatives must be submitted, in the second phase, a more extensive project proposal, which they will support in a face-to-face interview with a panel of international experts from different fields related to the pandemic. 

In order to launch the proposals as soon as possible, the call will be determined by mid-May.

The criteria that will be taken into account in the evaluation of the proposals are the following:

• Implementation and equipment. The viability of carrying out the project will be assessed, considering the alignment of the objectives with the proposed goals and the complementarity of the team.
• The development plan. It will be taken into account whether the proposal contributes to the overall project roadmap.
• The transfer potential. The extent to which the development of the project and the proposed goals have been correctly dimensioned will be analysed.
• The social impact. The consideration of social responsibility in the conception, design and development of the project results will be examined.

The firm commitment to research is a distinctive feature of the "la Caixa" Foundation. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the boost given by internationally renowned research centres working on research against COVID-19, such as the Institute of Global Health of Barcelona (ISGlobal) and IrsiCaixa.  Their teams, with which the "la Caixa" Foundation has maintained a stable collaboration for years, are tackling different lines of research to fight the virus, focusing on both the vaccine and new medicines.

In addition, in the context of the calls for proposals, Fundación "la Caixa", together with three private, independent foundations that are benchmarks in Europe -the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom), the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany) and the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Denmark)- has launched a global call for proposals for research in medicine and global health. It aims to support interdisciplinary research on how global mobility influences general health. Initiatives such as this will also serve to respond to possible crisis scenarios such as that generated by COVID-19.