Decode the Immunoscience of age-related diseases

What is this call about?

The topic funds research into how an ageing immune system drives immune diseases that start in old age, using existing and new cohorts, multi-omics and AI to find biomarkers. It aims to support personalised prevention and treatment.

What does this call fund?

Scope

Ageing weakens immune function and drives chronic low-grade inflammation, yet immune-mediated diseases that begin in old age are poorly understood and may be distinct from younger-onset disease. The topic funds research to identify the biological determinants of healthy ageing and immune-mediated disease, focusing on how age-related remodelling of the immune system shapes outcomes. Proposals should cover gastroenterological diseases (such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis), respiratory diseases (such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and immune-mediated interstitial lung disease) and rheumatoid diseases (such as rheumatoid arthritis, giant cell arteritis, polymyalgia rheumatica, Sjogren's disease and lupus).

Objectives

• Understand molecular and clinical differences between younger-onset and elderly-onset disease.
• Identify the drivers of elderly-onset immune diseases and of disease exacerbation with ageing.
• Evaluate biological age, as distinct from chronological age, as a driver of disease, and find predictive biomarkers including the influence of comorbidities.
• Understand patient heterogeneity in treatment response and molecular signatures, and the causal link between ageing, senescence and chronic inflammation.
• Identify common immunosenescence signatures and the role of vaccination history.
• Use AI and machine learning to identify and validate pathways and biomarkers, and assess how ageing affects treatment effectiveness.

Activities

Proposals should define a strategy for assessing age-related disease phenotypes and biomarkers, and use both existing cohorts and a new targeted observational cohort set up by the consortium, covering appropriate age ranges and onset groups with age-matched controls. Methods include immunological profiling, molecular profiling (RNA sequencing, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics), comparison of several ageing clocks, microbiome and virome analysis, electronic health records, and digital biomarkers from wearables. Applicants should consider regulatory impact and a regulatory strategy, engage regional healthcare systems, plan for sustainability of data and samples, and draw on European research infrastructures.

Expected outcomes

A better understanding of links between chronic inflammatory disease and biological ageing and precise risk profiles; new early detection and diagnostic approaches that separate elderly onset from younger adult onset; repurposed or new therapies and precision medicine for ageing populations; systematic collaborative use of biobanks across ages, diseases and comorbidities; insight into how ageing affects treatment response; and regulatory pathways for new interventions and biomarkers, including digital biomarkers. The action supports the European Health Data Space Regulation and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act.

When is the deadline?

8 October 2026

8 October 2026 for the first stage; the second stage deadline is 21 April 2027. This is a two-stage call.