Understanding how infections foster and induce non-communicable diseases

1. Accelerated access to cost-effective interventions through refined risk stratification, early detection and monitoring strategies for infection-associated NCDs. 2. Generation of novel vaccine strategies capable of preventing the onset of one or more chronic diseases over a lifetime. 3. Definition of targeted early intervention strategies by elucidating infection-driven cellular processes, metabolic pathways, enzymatic activities and gene expression changes to halt or reverse NCD progression. 4. Significant improvement in patient and population quality of life via prophylactic vaccines, early diagnostic tools and early therapeutic interventions that prevent health decline and reduce escalating healthcare costs. 5. Broad adoption of innovative, systematic approaches—integrating multi-omics, artificial intelligence and pre-clinical model verification—to mine existing cohorts and biobanks, thereby accelerating the development of prophylactic vaccines, diagnostics and early intervention strategies in EU healthcare innovation.

- Disease focus: neurodegenerative (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, ALS, dementias) and cardiometabolic (coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathies, myocardial infarction) NCDs linked to non-carcinogenic infectious agents (e.g. HSV, CMV, EBV, VZV, influenza, H. pylori). - Exclude launch of new broad prospective cohorts; limited recruitment allowed only to fill data gaps in existing cohorts. - Prioritise use of large general population, disease-specific and transplant/immunosuppressed cohorts to capture temporality and immune gradient effects. - Ensure cohort diversity (ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender balance). - Employ multi-omics, AI-assisted data mining and robust statistical methods for association discovery and causal inference. - Develop and apply pre-clinical or in silico validation models for MoA studies. - Conduct work under full ethical approval and GDPR-compliant data governance. - Maintain consortium transparency: declare data provenance, model interpretability, traceability and limitations. - Plan for regulatory engagement and regional health system involvement. - Produce a sustainability and exploitation strategy for long-term impact. - Actively seek synergies with IHI Call 11 and Cluster Health Topic “Relationship between infections and non-communicable diseases (HORIZON-HLTH-2023-DISEASE-03-07)”.