On January 20 and 21, ANRS Emerging Infectious Diseases (ANRS MIE) announced the results of its third call for proposals as part of the Priority Research Programs and Equipment initiative on emerging infectious diseases (PEPR MIE) and its call for applications for Junior Chairs, as well as the winners of the PEPR PREZODE (Preventing Zoonotic Disease Emergence) call for proposals.

The PEPR MIE and PEPR PREZODE programs are part of the national acceleration strategy for emerging infectious diseases and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, within the research section of the France 2030 plan, aimed at equipping France for a major future health crisis by strengthening understanding of emerging diseases and how they can be prevented and treated.

Results of the third PEPR MIE call for proposals

The aim of PEPR MIE, led by Inserm via ANRS Emerging Infectious Diseases (ANRS MIE), is to improve understanding of how to effectively prevent and control emerging infectious diseases, while also developing counter-measures for the diagnosis, protection and treatment of individuals, together with health policies based on scientific evidence that are adapted to the specific context of each crisis. It involves three areas of action:

• Area 1: Accelerating knowledge acquisition on emerging infectious diseases
• Area 2: Organizing and developing new treatments, vaccines and other tools for the prevention, diagnosis and surveillance of emerging infectious diseases
• Area 3: Ensuring that public policy and society are in a position to deal with epidemics

Nine of the 36 proposals submitted following this third call were selected, including:

• Two projects led by Institut Pasteur teams:

  • Flu-PREDICT, led by the team of Nadia Naffakh, Head of the RNA Biology of Influenza Viruses Unit, comes under area 1 and involves a hybrid, experimental, machine-learning-based approach to predict reassortment in avian, human and swine influenza viruses.

  • INFODEM-EARLY, led by Léonard Heyerdahl, a postdoctoral fellow in the Anthropology and Ecology of Disease Emergence Unit headed by Tamara Giles-Vernick, sets out to contribute to area 3 by creating an augmented anthropology platform for real-time detection, classification and mitigation of infodemics, with the aim of strengthening trust in vaccines targeting arboviruses in French overseas territories.
     

• Six Institut Pasteur teams involved in five other projects:

  • CHICAGO: the teams led by Marc Lecuit and Félix Rey are involved in this project within area 1, aimed at elucidating the molecular and cellular mechanisms underpinning the replication and pathogenesis of chikungunya virus in mammal hosts and insect vectors.

  • CCHFabric: Pablo Guardado-Calvo's team is a partner of this project representing area 1, which will explore the host and viral factors governing the assembly mechanism of the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus and orthonairoviruses.

  • MuST-RSV: the team headed by Marie-Anne Rameix-Welti is involved in this project under area 1, which sets out to explore the proliferation of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) from a novel angle by focusing on the multiscale regulation of transcription and translation during RSV infection.

  • Disorder-to-adapt: Nadia Naffakh's team is associated with this area 1 project aiming to characterize the role of disordered proteins in the adaptation of avian influenza to humans, and to use this knowledge to explore novel approaches to the development of virus inhibitors.

  • CATMOS: the team led by Marcel Hollenstein is involved in this project under area 2, aimed at developing a groundbreaking technology that can monitor the presence of pathogens in the air, to help more effectively control emerging and re-emerging respiratory infectious diseases at both individual and collective level.

Results of the 2025 PEPR MIE call for applications for Junior Chairs

The five new Junior Chairs selected at the end of 2025 include two Institut Pasteur scientists:

• Marine Petit for the TICK-TACK-TOE project, which sets out to understand the interactions between cellular stress, immunity and viral infection in ticks to block the spread of hemorrhagic arboviruses.

• Thomas Vial for the CLIMARBO project, aimed at elucidating the molecular, cellular and metabolic mechanisms that are influencing mosquitoes' vector competence as a result of climate change.

Read the PEPR MIE press release

Results of the third and final PEPR PREZODE call for proposals

The goal of PEPR PREZODE, led by the IRD, CIRAD and INRAE, is to strengthen knowledge production and the development of tools with the aim of devising innovative strategies for risk reduction and early detection of emerging diseases. The third call for proposals was launched in 2025 to support interdisciplinary basic research projects that seek to identify preventive solutions to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease emergence, focusing on three areas:

1. Identifying risk and resilience factors that could be targeted by zoonosis prevention strategies.
2. Co-developing zoonosis prevention strategies and characterizing their epidemiological, sociological, cultural and economic impacts.
3. Understanding the sociocultural factors that may lead to bias or ineffectiveness in prevention strategies and assessing their acceptability.

Following a review of the 13 eligible proposals by an international panel of experts, two research proposals were selected, including the CARE (Community Awareness and Response for Emerging zoonotic outbreaks) project led by Katherine Worsley-Tonks, a postdoctoral fellow in the Lyssavirus Epidemiology and Neuropathology Unit led by Hervé Bourhy.

The CARE project sets out to improve prevention of emerging zoonotic diseases by co-developing flexible risk-reduction frameworks with communities, promoting the long-term adoption of preventive measures and improving early detection of cases. The project will evaluate the impact of this approach on knowledge and representations of zoonoses, the adoption of preventive behaviors, community-based surveillance, epidemiological understanding and the related cost-benefit ratio. It will be implemented in contrasting environmental, socio-economic and cultural contexts in Africa (in Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire and Zimbabwe) and France, and will target several pathogens with different epidemiological profiles, including avian influenza, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and rabies, to test the transferability and effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Read the PEPR PREZODE press release (in French)