The Qatar National Research Fund has launched the 5^th offering of its Path Towards Precision Medicine (PPM). PPM aims to advance research in guiding healthcare decisions towards effective and individualised prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. The programme will continue to support genomic research in Qatar, ideally using samples and data collected and generated by the Qatar BioBank (QBB) and Qatar Genome Programme (QGP), with an added focus on translating research into clinical implementation. Jointly QBB and QGP are driven to collaborate on building local a genomic library and mining this to extract and integrate genetic data with clinical, lifestyle information to build precision medicine approaches to improve the health of the Qatari population.

Awards last up to 4 years, with budgets of up to US $225k per annum considered across 4 key priority areas: clinical genomics of pediatric diseases; clinical implementation of pharmacogenomics; digital applications for precision medicine; and genomic characterization of immune conditions.

Submissions opened mid-March and will remain open until the end of May, with successful proposals and awards announced in November.

Qatar Foundation (QF) established Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) in 2006 as part of its ongoing commitment to establish Qatar as a knowledge-based economy. QF views research as essential to national and regional growth, as the means to diversify the nation’s economy, enhance educational offerings and develop areas that affect the community, such as health and the environment.