Cascade Open Call 2023 for Research Node 4 - NETWORK FOR IDENTIFICATION OF CLINICAL AND DIAGNOSTIC MARKERS OF DISEASE SEVERITY/OUTCOME AND IMMUNOLOGICAL MONITORING: A. ADULTS, B. CHILDREN, C. INTENSIVE CARE

Clinical monitoring of severity of emerging infections and response to treatment is a challenging task. Target patient populations are people hosted in adult and paediatric infectious disease wards as well as those in intensive care units due to diseases caused by emerging pathogens targeted by the INF-ACT project. Partner institutions of the call should, overall, be able to constitute networks able to gather data from the three target patient populations.

Projects responding to this call should aim to expand a national multisectorial network to identify clinical/diagnostic/immunological parameters that are indicative of disease severity/outcome.

Expected Results: Improvement, through the analysis of the association between clinical/immunological/microbiological markers, the characterization of recognizable disease profiles for more personalized approaches to clinical care.

• Calls will be open to teams including both private and public entities (minimum: 5 entities), external to the INF-ACT consortium.
• Each team must identify a lead organization (Leader), or the subject appointed and authorized to represent the whole team and maintain communications with the Spoke during all phases of the presentation and evaluation procedure and for the entire duration of the activities planning;
• The team Leader must be a public University or a public Research Organization;
• Each team Leader may submit only one project proposal in response to this call. On the other hand, the possibility is not precluded for the same entity to be part of other teams in response to other Cascade Calls
• Each team entity must indicate the name of the researchers involved in the proposed project activities (so-called "critical mass"), the expected commitment in person-months, their curriculum vitae to assess the actual contribution to the research work.
• Each team entity must participate with at least one researcher. The maximum number of researchers to be involved as critical mass for this project is 50.
• Each team must allocate at least 40% of the requested financing to entities located in regions of Southern Italy (tagging: territorial);
• In case of recruitment of new researchers, the team must comply with the provisions of article 47 "Equal opportunities, generational and gender, in public contracts PNRR and PNC" of Law Decree 31-May-2021, no. 77 converted into law 29-July-2021, n. 108;
• Budget breakdown and financial reporting must comply with guidelines and regulation for RRNP funded-projects.

Collection of applications started at 04:00 PM on Nov 10, 2023 and closed at 12:00 PM on Dec 21, 2023

Proposals were evaluated on the basis of the following evaluation criteria:

• Objective and scientific quality (max 50 points)
• Innovation and private sector involvement (max 20 points)
• Impact (max 15 points)
• Economic sustainability (max 15 points)

Proposals were considered admissible for financing if they obtain at least 70 out of 100 points. Evaluation will be carried out by a panel of 3-5 international and highly-qualified scientists, who are not directly involved in the INF-ACT Research Program. Reviewers will sign a declaration to exclude possible conflicts of interest before accessing the scientific proposals to be evaluated.

The final ranking list has been published on the ISS website.