ECD Global Alliance
Grants
Overview
The ECD Global Alliance funds research dedicated to learning more about Erdheim Chester Disease. In addition, the organization works with research teams and patients to facilitate communication between the two groups. The organization is interested in exploring the diagnosis, cause, treatments, and cure of Erdheim-Chester Disease.
Requests for Proposals Now Being Accepted
The ECD Global Alliance will offer another research grant in 2013. If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please email support@erdheim-chester.org. A Request for Propoal will be sent out in January 2013 with proposals due May 15, 2013. The Request for Proposal (RFP) flyer can be found here.
Grant Applications
The grant submission process requires an application to be submitted according to a set of requirements that can be found here. The organization reserves the right to modify these guidelines, as it deems appropriate. However, the guidelines are provided here to help researchers in their planning. There are no plans in the near future to make any major modifications to these requirements.
Grant Review Process
The grant review process used by the ECD-GA is based on the process used by the National Institutes of Health. It relies on a Grant Application Review (GAR) Committee with members who are qualified researchers. Individuals of the committee first review each application independently. The GAR Committee then comes together as a group to share comments and discuss each application submitted. This committee provides the ECD Global Alliance Board of Directors a ranking order of the applications. The Board of Directors then makes the final funding decision and notifies the applicants. This process can be found here and the criteria by which applications are scored can be found here.
Previous Grants Awarded
The ECD Global Alliance has awarded two $50,000 research grants to study Erdheim-Chester Disease as follows:
2012 ECD-GA Grant Awarded to Julien Haroche, MD, Phd.
Proposals for the 2nd $50,000 research grant awarded by the ECD-GA were due December 31, 2011. In April 2011, the organization announced the grant was awarded to Laurent Arnaud, MD, PhD and Julen Haroche, MD, PhD from SHôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris, France for the study described as, "Understanding dendritic cell lineages in Erdheim-Chester disease: towards a non-invasive diagnosis". The aim of this study is to understand the primary mechanisms involved in the pathogenic differentiation of histiocytes in ECD, as well as to use these data to derive a screening & diagnostic test for ECD that would rely on blood sampling without the need for a biopsy. It is expected the study will run from September 2012 until September 2013.
2011 ECD-GA Grant Awarded to Lorenzo Dagna, MD. Final report: "Hypoxia and inflammation in Erdheim-Chester disease microenvironment: insights on the pathogenesis and implications for therapy final report".
In April 2010, only one month after receiving a 501(c)(3) designation, the organization announced it would be awarding a $50,000 ECD research grant and put out a Request for Proposals (RFP) to the international medical research community. In November 2010, the first grant recipient was chosen.
The ECD Global Alliance 2010 grant was awarded to Lorenzo Dagna, MD at San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milano, Italy for the study described as, "Hypoxia and inflammation in Erdheim-Chester disease microenvironment: insights on the pathogenesis and implications for therapy proposal". The aim of this study was to better define the microenvironment inside ECD lesions and to evaluate the possibility of using specific drugs, already available for human usage, as a means to find new therapeutic options for the disease. The study ran from January 2011 until June 2012.
For More Information, Contact:
Kathy Brewer, President
ECD Global Alliance
P.O. Box 775
DeRidder, LA 70634 USA
1-337-515-6987
Last updated: December 23, 2012