Submission results ERA-MBT second call for proposals | Marinebiotech

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Submission results ERA-MBT second call for proposals

Published on 21 March 2016

The 2nd ERA-MBT Call, which was launched in December 2015, has resulted in the submission of 41 applications requesting a total funding of € 45 million. The call entitled “Biodiscovery - Bioactive molecules from the marine environment” received a lot of attention, mainly from higher education institutions and non-university public research organisations which accounted for respectively 60% and 25% of the requested funding. Commercial companies accounted for 10% of the requested funding while non-profit organisations requested 5%.

The main purpose of this call was to explore bioactive molecules in organisms from the oceans, including those from fishery  and aquaculture  activity, or  in materials   which   result   from   the   processing   of   marine   organisms. The aim is to further  explore  the potential and to  provide compounds  that  offer  chemical diversity and bioactive potency of value in meeting the needs of society.

The call is an initiative of 14 funding organisations from 11 countries and the number of proposals reflects the committed budget of the countries involved. Partnering between at least 3 different countries resulted in teams from Norway, Germany, Portugal and Ireland being most prominently included. Iceland, Italy and Sweden are also well represented, and two applications were received from British Columbia (Canada), who joined the call from outside the ERA-MBT consortium.

By the end of September, the ERA-MBT consortium will announce the names of the granted projects. These projects are expected to start early 2017.