Funding, Consortia, International Projects, and Accreditations

The ACRCelerate: Colorectal Cancer Stratified Medicine Network is a European-wide consortium of researchers at the forefront of CRC research. The overall aim of this project is to generate robust and reproducible preclinical data to de-risk future clinical trials based on patient stratification. The ACRCelerate partners work together to develop preclinical models that recapitulate the molecular subtypes of CRC and characterize their signaling pathways using DNA and RNA sequencing to subtype the models, as well as identify and test new therapeutics integrating data in a bioinformatic analysis pipeline.

This partnership between Cancer Research UK (CRUK), Fundación Científica de la Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (FC AECC), and the Fondazione AIRC per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC), capitalizes on shared priorities across their respective research communities and is driven by a shared ambition to advance progress in translational research by building outstanding global networks. By bringing together renowned teams in the UK, Italy, and Spain, including VHIO, ACRCelerate harnesses the collective expertise of leading investigators to develop new resources and accelerate progress in collaboration.

AI4Lungs is a project funded under the HORIZON Call for Tools and Technologies for a Healthy Society (two-stage 2022). The consortium gathers a total of 18 partners, including VHIO, seeking to develop and validate AI-based tools and computational models that may improve the clinical management of patients with respiratory diseases.

Leveraging multiple data sources from clinical partners, as well as registries and open national and international databases, AI4Lungs will provide patients access to global data and knowledge sharing platforms, to ensure a more accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. By scaling up, AI4Lungs will end up supporting any patient from any country and any hospital.

This project will reduce costs and efforts from the health system by avoiding unnecessary testing, ineffective treatments and emergency services, thus optimizing the use of health technologies and resources.

https://www.ai4lungs.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-HLTH-2022-TOOL-12-two-stage under grant agreement No. 101080756.

Cancer Core Europe (CCE) is a unique partnership aimed at addressing the cancer care - cancer research continuum challenge. Launched in 2014, this working consortium represents a critical mass of activity for the successful integration of all cancer care information, clinical research and outcome research, led by its founding partners and European comprehensive cancer centers of excellence: the Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus Grand Paris (Villejuif, France), Cambridge Cancer Centre (Cambridge, UK), Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden), Netherlands Cancer Institute – NKI (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), National Center for Tumor Diseases – DKFZ-NCT (Heidelberg, Germany), VHIO, as well as The National Cancer Institute of Milan (Italy).

CEE promotes the pooling and exchange of expertise, research findings, common platforms and processes, and empowers researchers and clinicians to rapidly exploit this trove of biological insights and clinical data for the benefit of patients. Since 2023, VHIO chairs this alliance, with Josep Tabernero serving as Chair of the Board of Directors and Javier Carmona (Head of VHIO’s Scientific Strategy Unit) as Chief Scientific Officer.

www.cancercoreeurope.eu

CCE’s Basket of Baskets (BoB) trial is a modular, open-label, phase II, multicenter study to evaluate targeted agents in molecularly selected populations with advanced solid tumors. This study is carried out under the Cancer Core Europe (CCE) umbrella, with VHIO as trial sponsor.

This modular basket clinical trial is the largest precision oncology trial in Europe and consists of two parts: part A (iPROFILER), which includes the common procedures for tumor molecular profiling and treatment recommendation, and part B (iBASKET), which corresponds to the therapeutic portion. The purpose of part A is to assess participants’ tumor tissue in order to identify whether their respective tumors have certain mutations in cancer-related genes. This analysis provides information about potential targeted therapies that specifically target those gene mutations. The study, led by Irene Braña, Head of VHIO’s Head and Neck Group and member of the UITM, seeks to accelerate the clinical development of personalized targeted agents through identifying promising efficacy signals that may provide rationale for larger clinical studies in new indications.

www.basketofbaskets.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101058620.

The EU-funded CCE’s Building Data Rich Clinical Trials (CCE-DART), coordinated by VHIO, is carried out in collaboration with other leading experts from within the Cancer Core Europe Consortium (CCE). By harnessing and incorporating powerful cutting-edge technologies, methods and platforms, CCE-DART investigators will design and develop a new generation of data-rich, dynamic studies in oncology.

Building on the CCE-developed Basket of Baskets (BoB) investigator-initiated and adaptive trial which launched in 2018, CCE-DART further enhances BoB’s harmonized, molecular multi-tier profiling platform to more precisely match patients to novel anti-cancer medicines based on the genetic specificities of their individual tumors. In parallel, the researchers will continue to develop multiple treatments in genomically-selected populations.

www.cce-dart.com

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 framework programme research under grant agreement No: 965397.

Launched in 2019, the OPTIMISTICC Cancer Grand Challenge – Opportunity to Investigate the Microbiome’s Impact on Science and Treatment In Colorectal Cancer, is a 5-year consortium funded by Cancer Research UK’s Grand Challenge, led by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute-Harvard Medical School, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (USA).

Aimed at better understanding the difference between a healthy microbiome and a microbiome associated with the development of colorectal cancer, the co-investigators from the US, Canada, UK, the Netherlands, and Spain, are seeking to identify ways to manipulate this collection of microorganisms to better prevent and treat cancer. It is thanks to the Grand Challenge funding that the project partners, including VHIO, are able to pool the necessary expertise in order to establish how the microbiome influences a cancer’s response to treatment, develop new treatments that alter the microbiome, and decipher how an individual’s external environment may affect their microbiome.

www.optimisticc.org

canSERV is an EU-funded project under the Horizon Europe programme to provide cutting-edge, interdisciplinary and customized oncology services across the entire cancer continuum. Incorporating 19 European partners including VHIO, it aims to offer a comprehensive portfolio of oncology-related research services available to all scientists in EU member countries, associated countries and beyond.

This network combines expertise in the oncology development pipeline and seeks to foster a pan-European collaboration to promote innovative research projects and deliver precision medicine solutions for the benefit of cancer patients. Awarded through the HORIZON-INFRA-SERV call, canSERV will offer state-of-the-art services to the cancer research community in order to provide the necessary resources to develop new projects in personalized medicine.

By connecting, coordinating, and aligning existing oncology and complimentary research infrastructures and providing services in a synergistic way transnationally, this project will capitalize on the critical mass of experts and services offered by the 13 research infrastructures that it brings together.

Various VHIO groups are participating in this translational and multidisciplinary initiative including Joaquin Arribas’ Growth Factors Group, Violeta Serra’s Experimental Therapeutics Group, and out Stem Cells and Cancer Group led by Héctor G. Palmer, with Elena Garralda, Head of VHIO’s Early Clinical Drug Development Group and Director of our Research Unit for Molecular Therapy of Cancer (UITM) – CaixaResearch, as Principal Investigator of the project at VHIO.

www.canserv.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101058620.

CARE1 has been funded under the Pragmatic Clinical Trials to optimise treatments for patients with refractory cancers Call. The consortium is made of 15 participants, including VHIO, to build a large-scale platform to define therapy guidelines based on new biomarkers. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on Diagnosis and Treatment.

The CARE group is a European initiative of European RCC physicians who have gathered to define high-priority topics in academic research and launch dedicated trials, given the high number of cases of Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC), and subsequent deaths.

CARE-1 is a prospective randomized phase III study, whose primary endpoint is comparing overall survival when using the two different types of combination therapy utilized nowadays as the standard of care, to define the optimal combination.

https://www.gustaveroussy.fr/en/care1-european-study-first-line-treatment-metastatic-kidney-cancer

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-MISS-2022-CANCER-01 under grant agreement No. 101104801.

Comprehensive Cancer Infrastructures 4 Europe (CCI4EU) is an EU-funded project under the Strengthening Research Capacities of Comprehensive Cancer Infrastructures call. The initiative brings together a network of 54 research institutions across 27 EU Member States and 5 Associated Countries. VHIO is an active member of this consortium, which was established to reduce disparities in cancer research and care by promoting an inclusive, integrated approach.

CCI4EU was launched in response to persistent inequalities between and within countries regarding access to research, innovation, and high-quality cancer care - an urgent issue given that cancer is the second leading cause of death in Europe, with incidence expected to rise by 2% by 2035.

The project will implement a European Capacity Building Programme across all Member States, aligning with other key initiatives such as CRANE, JANE, and UNCAN. The programme will operate at the individual, institutional, and systemic levels, and its impact will be amplified through close coordination with ongoing EU cancer research projects. An education component will further support knowledge sharing and capacity development across the continent.

https://cci4eu.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-MISS-2022-CANCER-01 under grant agreement No. 101103746.

CGI-Clinics is a European project aimed at advancing personalized cancer medicine by improving the interpretation of genomic data - an essential step between sequencing and selecting matched targeted therapies. Currently, this stage represents a critical bottleneck in the broader adoption and impact of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in oncology. The project addresses three major challenges in genomic data interpretation: lack of standardization, a high prevalence of variants of unknown significance (VUS), and limited patient empowerment.

Nowadays, interpreting cancer genomic data requires experts to navigate dispersed databases and resources, which represents a time-consuming and fragmented process that can lead to inconsistent or suboptimal clinical decisions. Addressing this, CGI-Clinics proposes a comprehensive solution by integrating data from public and private hospital databases into a centralized platform. This will systematize the interpretation of tumor genomes, support oncologists in selecting the most effective therapies, and enable virtual molecular tumor boards co-led by reference hospitals.

This project will be developed through three phases: a setup (assessing institutional needs), validation (piloting the platform with the 9 clinical partners) and replication (expanding to 30 hospitals across the EU). This phased approach aims to democratize access to high-quality genomic interpretation, regardless of an institution’s size, resources, or technology platform. It will also provide health economics validation and contribute to the universal application of genomic insights in personalized oncology.

CGI-Clinics was awarded under the European Commission's HORIZON-RIA call and is led by the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB, Barcelona) and VHIO. The project brings together 17 project partners across four countries, including patient advocacy organizations, clinicians and researchers. VHIO’s contribution is spearheaded by Dr. Ana Vivancos, Principal Investigator of the Cancer Genomics Group.

www.cgiclinics.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05-02 under grant agreement No. 101057509.

EOSC4Cancer will make diverse types of cancer data accessible: genomics, imaging, medical, clinical, environmental, and socio-economic. It will use and enhance federated and interoperable systems for securely identifying, sharing, processing and reusing FAIR data across borders and offer them via community-driven analysis environments.

EOSC4 Cancer’s well curated data sets will be essential input for reproducible and robust analytics and computational methods – including machine learning and artificial intelligence. EOSC4Cancer’s five use cases will cover the patient journey from cancer prevention over diagnosis to treatment, laying the foundation of data trajectories and workflows for future European Cancer Mission projects.

The EOSC4Cancer consortium, jointly coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC, Barcelona) and ELIXIR (Cambridge, UK), comprises 29 partners, including VHIO, from 13 countries. Participating organizations include cancer research centers, research infrastructures, leading research groups, hospitals, supercomputing centers, as well as affiliated entities.

To make the developments sustainable, EOSC4Cancer will leverage the partners’ research infrastructures partners and the EOSC ecosystem. It will also serve the European Cancer Mission, by engaging with large international coalitions (e.g., ICGC-Argo, GA4GH, 1+MG/B1MG, Cancer Core Europe, European Cancer Information System, European Network of Cancer Registries, Innovative Partnership for Action Against Cancer Joint Action) and patients/survivors associations.

www.eosc4cancer.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01 under grant agreement No. 101058427.

EUonQoL is a four-year project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme. Its goal is to develop, pilot, and validate the EUonQoL-Kit, a unified, patient-driven system for assessing quality of life (QoL) in cancer patients and survivors, grounded in their selef-evaluations and preferences.

Led by the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (Milan, Italy), and including VHIO among its partners, the project is firmly rooted in a co-design approach centered on integrating patients’ perspectives. As such, patients, healthcare professionals, policymakers, administrators, and citizens are actively involved throughout all phases of development. The resulting tool will be made available in the languages of EU Member States and Associated Countries through digital platforms and is intended for use in future EU Cancer Mission surveys.

A pilot study will be conducted within the first 24 months, enrolling 4,000 cancer patients and survivors across a network of European cancer centers via digital data collection. The project will also analyze the various factors influencing QoL and explore strategies for implementation, scalability, and alignment with other Cancer Mission initiatives.

EUonQoL brings together research institutions, cancer centers, scientific and professional societies, and patient advocacy groups—all with deep expertise in developing self-reported QoL measures. This collaborative effort supports the project’s broader ambition: to inform and influence future cancer care policy and clinical practice through robust, patient-centered QoL data.

www.euonqol.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme HORIZON-MISS-2021-CANCER-02-02 under Grant Agreement No. 101096362.

The EurOPDX Consortium – Translating Knowledge in Oncology, launched in 2013 to create a network of clinically relevant models of human cancer, and in particular patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models.

Connecting 18 cancer centers across 13 countries that are developing PDX cancer models, this initiative promotes the sharing and exchange of findings on promising therapeutics as well as leads multicenter preclinical studies. EurOPDX strives to reduce the duplication of efforts in oncology drug development and ultimately improve the quality of life and overall survival of cancer patients.

Supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and launched in 2018, EDIReX – EurOPDX Distributed Infrastructure for Research on patient-derived cancer Xenografts, is led by the EurOPDX Consortium counting on the research excellence of 19 entities -including VHIO- spanning 13 European countries.

The main aims of this project are to facilitate data exchange among academic and industrial preclinical and translational cancer professionals and, to spur and consolidate scientific collaborations in PDX research across Europe.

www.europdx.eu

The EDIReX project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No. 731105.

I3LUNG is a five-year European project funded under the framework of the H2020 call: Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health care. The consortium gathers 16 partners, including VHIO, with different expertise located worldwide, with the common goal of providing optimal care and perosonalized treatment for patients affected by metastatic lung cancer.

Thanks to the collection of biological, molecular, radiological, and clinical data from more than 2000 metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) patients, I3LUNG will integrate all the collected information and thanks to the power of AI, generate a machine learning algorithm that will be able to predict the individual response to immunotherapy regimens. This tool will help to stratify mNSCLC patients and match tailored treatment to each case, moving lung cancer care away from a one-size-fits-all approach to more of a personalized treatment plan.

This individualized patient selection strategy will also help to reduce the European economic burden and improve patient outcomes by better matching available treatments to patients.

www.i3lung.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05 under grant agreement No. 101057695.

Immune-Image is a 22 stakeholder-strong consortium incorporating public and private partners across 9 countries, including VHIO and the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR) from Spain.

Powered by the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI 2 JU), this initiative is led by Roche and coordinated by the Amsterdam University Medical Center (VUmC), the Netherlands. Set to run for an initial duration of five years, this project is entitled Specific imaging of immune cell dynamics using novel tracer strategies, and seeks to develop a novel non-invasive imaging strategy for assessing immune cell activation and dynamics in oncology and inflammatory disease.

Main deliverables include developing clinically validated radio-and optical immunotracers for the monitoring and measurement of immune cell presence, activation status and trafficking, and designing and implementing a ready-to-use sustainable molecular imaging platform, incorporating standardized protocols, best practices, quantitative image analyses, immune-based tracking design and development.

www.immune-image.eu

Immune4ALL is a 3-year project comprising 29 research groups and 215 researchers from 8 Spanish autonomous communities, encompassing three different areas of the CIBER – Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red network (cancer, hepatic diseases, and rare diseases) and the National Biobank and Biomodel Platform.

Aimed at exploring the feasibility of predictive and pharmacodynamics biomarkers of immunotherapy in solid tumors, this nationwide program is coordinated by Enrique de Álava, Virgen del Rocío University Hospital (University of Seville), and is structured around several pilot studies that include developing and validating these markers for immunotherapy and the generation of a computational framework for data processing analysis, filtering visualization, and clinical decision support aligned with IMPaCT.

Focused on solid tumor types that cause high mortality, specifically in women, such as carcinoma of the breast, ovary, and cervix, or in both sexes, including hepatocellular carcinoma, bile duct carcinoma, GI-tract neuroendocrine tumors, and colorectal carcinoma, this project also has two general objectives devoted to social and economic perspectives (creating shared decision-making spaces with patients and generating cost-effective evidence) and training activities with patients and professionals in the field of precision medicine.

Immune4ALL’s strategy is to integrate leading groups with outstanding experience in clinical, translational, and technological research in the development and validation of immuno-oncology biomarkers (including Digital Pathology/Artificial Intelligence, liquid biopsy, and experimental models) and the development of personalized immunotherapies working in recognized institutes across Spain, under the umbrella of CIBER.

This project has been granted under the scope of the Proyectos de investigación de medicina personalizada program of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Institute of Health Carlos III – ISCIII).

IMPaCT – Infraestructura de Medicina de Precision asociada a la Ciencia y Tecnología, is a collaborative structure for the implementation of genomic medicine in the Spanish National Health System, coordinated by CIBER (Spanish Biomedical Research Networking Centers).

VHIO participates in Work Package 4, focused on cancer, and leads the unknown primary tumors part. WP4 aims to establish genomic methods to analyze tumors, create a portfolio of diagnostic services, standardize laboratory protocols and sample processing methods in order to establish variant interpretation guidelines and establish a clinical reporting model.

A network of high-capacity genomic analysis from existing centers will be established. This infrastructure will focus on rare diseases, cancers of unknown origin, and pharmacogenetics. This is a national program aimed at establishing standardized procedures to guarantee equitable access to genomic analysis. The Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona, will be responsible for the centralization of samples.

www.impact-genomica.com

This project is funded by the Subdirección General de Evaluación y Fomento de la investigación dentro del Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo. Convocatoria Infraestructura de Medicina de Precisión Asociada a la Ciencia y Tecnología - IMPaCT. Ref: IMP/00009.

INGENIO - INtegrative GENomic, digital Imaging and clinical information towards precision Oncology optimization, is a 4-year interdisciplinary program aimed at boosting precision oncology through the implementation of predictive biomarkers, digital imaging and pathology, as well as artificial intelligence (clinical and genomic).

Main goals include the development of a CIBER (Spanish Biomedical Research Networking Centers) platform that integrates data on biomarker determination and clinical outcomes in lung cancer, advancing digital imaging (pathology and radiomics) and validation for precision oncology, validating new technologies and strategies for clinical and biomarker implementation, and evaluating emerging biomarkers in other solid tumors. Program partners, including VHIO, will also seek to test clinical intervention in agnostic targets, and establish a strategy for the creation and implementation of a Molecular Tumor Board (MTB).

INGENIO comprises groups with predominant experience in clinical and translational research in biomarker assessment, personalized patient care, digital imaging, artificial intelligence and data science, from research centers of excellence across Spain belonging to the CIBER network.

This project is funded by a grant received from the Carlos III Institute of Health (ISCIII) for personalized precision medicine research projects, as part of the Strategic Action in Health (AES) 2017-2020.

Implementing inter-specialty cancer training in 100 centres across Europe, INTERACT-EUROPE 100 is a project funded under the Call EU4Health Programme 2021-2027 – a vision for a healthier European Union as part of Europe’s Beathing Cancer Plan. The consortium is formed by 38 partner organisations, of which VHIO is a member.

This project builds upon the work done by INTERACT-EUROPE, its predecessor, and it aims to provide cancer care professionals with inter-speciality cancer training (ISCT), by fostering stronger collaboration among its providers and equipping professionals from various specialities with the skills needed for more effective collaboration.

This project aligns seamlessly with the principles laid out in the European Code of Cancer Practice, as it aims to deliver the best possible outcomes for patients.

This project has received funding from the EU4H-2022-PJ.

The MIRACLE project has been awarded under the ERA PerMed Joint Transnational Call 2021: Multidisciplinary research projects on personalized medicine – development of clinical support tools for personalised medicine implementation. This consortium comprises 5 partners and is jointly led by Paola Ulivi, Scientific Institute for Research, Hospitalization and Healthcare (IRCCS, Italy), and VHIO’s Enriqueta Felip.

MIRACLE - A machine learning approach to identify patients with resected non-small-cell lung cancer with high risk of relapse, aims to develop and validate a machine learning algorithm acting as a clinical decision support tool for disease free survival prediction based on joint analysis of biological, clinical, and radiologic features.

MucOncoBots is the Drug-loaded nanobots for transmucosal delivery to mucinous tumours proposal, funded under the ERC-2023-POC. VHIO is one of the beneficiaries of this project, which aims to assess the use of transmucosal delivery of anti-cancer drugs as opposed to the standard of care to treat pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP), a mucus-secreting tumour.

This project will utilise patient-derived organoids and xenografts from PMP patients, to analyse whether the nanobots used can overcome the mucus barrier to treat PMP. Furthermore, some of these patients have been shown to present oncogenic BRAFV600E mutations, thus introducing a new druggable targeted mutation.

A comparative study will be performed to assess the treatment’s efficacy compared to the standard of care to ensure the translation of the results to the clinic.

This project has received funding from the ERC Proof of Concept Grant provided by the European Research Council under grant agreement No. 101138723.

Aimed at revolutionizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare using Swarm Learning (SL), the 5-year EU-funded ODELIA research project: Open Consortium for Decentralized Medical Artificial Intelligence, will establish the first pan-European SL network that allows for privacy conserving training of medical AI algorithms with the true democratic participation of all 12 partners from across Europe including VHIO (academic institutions and industry partners).

Through this network, AI algorithms will be developed and validated for the detection of breast cancer in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening examinations as a demonstration case. Training clinically useful AI models usually requires sharing of patient related data which often faces several obstacles. This problem has been tackled by federated learning (FL). However, in FL AI models are combined by a central coordinator requiring participants to relinquish control over the AI model, concentrating control and commercial exploitation in a single actor. This limitation has been addressed by swarm learning, in which AI models are trained decentrally and models are combined without the requirement for a central coordinator. SL in medical AI has never previously been applied in a real-world large-scale setting, which is the main objective of ODELIA.

This pan-European academic and clinical consortium will develop, implement and evaluate SL-based workflows to train AI models in medical imaging, in particular- and as an exemplary demonstration case - in the context of breast cancer screening. A blockchain will be created to enable institutions across Europe to jointly train AI models without having to share their data or rely on a central coordinator.

www.eibir.org/projects/odelia/

The ODELIA project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe and innovation programme HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05 under grant agreement No. 101057091.

The EU-funded ONCNGS project aims to tackle a common, unmet need in oncology; namely to profile multiple tumor types at the molecular level in the broadest possible way and establish an economically sustainable and de-centralized model that facilitates secure and transparent access to sensitive data.

ONCNGS challenges the market to research and develop novel, affordable solutions to provide the best NGS tests for all solid tumor and lymphoma patients. The challenge consists of providing efficient molecular DNA/RNA profiling of tumor-derived material in liquid biopsies by means of a pan-cancer tumor marker analysis kit including NGS analysis integrated with an ICT decision support system, and an analytical test for interpretation and reporting.

www.oncngs.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 874467.

ONCODISTINCT is a research network that brings together leading academic investigators with a shared vision for innovative clinical research.

Established by several cancer institutes in and outside of Europe, this network comprises a multidisciplinary group of investigators with expertise in early drug development and clinical research.

Together, they aim to address the current challenges in oncology and improve patient outcomes by designing and conducting innovative clinical studies, and accelerating the development of anti-cancer medicines in solid tumors, particularly in settings with unmet medical needs.

ONCODISTINCT currently connects 28 cancer centers and university hospitals, and fosters collaborations between oncologists, organ specialists, radiotherapists and scientists across the ONCODISTINCT sites, as well as pharmaceutical companies. Established seven years ago, the network is dynamically evolving as it continues to incorporate new clinical centers as well as think tank institutes as members.

www.oncodistinct.net

PCM4EU – Personalised Cancer Medicine for all EU Citizens, is a project under the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan by EU4Health and comprises partners from 15 countries across Europe, including VHIO. Centered on facilitating the implementation of molecular cancer diagnostics for precision oncology such as DRUP-like clinical trials, PCM4EU is coordinated by Hans Gelderblom at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), the Netherlands.

PCM4EU is divided into six workpackages (WPs): WP2 focuses on mapping and facilitating the use of molecular cancer diagnostics, and WP3 involves precision oncology and promoting and initiating more national DRUP-like clinical trials in European countries. WP4 is dedicated to implementing precision oncology and standards for use in diagnostics and molecular tumour boards (MTBs) in European countries. WP5 promotes equitable and cross-border access, and WP6 focuses on the training of the next generation of oncologists. PCM4EU also includes a patient engagement strategy to ensure access to molecular-based clinical trials and will also build a data aggregation platform. VHIO participates in WP2, WP3 and WP5.

The PCM4EU project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe and innovation programme HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05 under grant agreement No. 101057091.

PERSIST-SEQ is a public-private partnership funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), with representation from academic institutions, small- and medium-sized enterprises, public organizations and pharmaceutical companies.

The PERSIST-SEQ five-year international collaboration, led by the Oncode Institute (Utrecht, The Netherlands) and AstraZeneca, comprises 14 partners including VHIO and aims to provide the cancer research community with a new gold standard workflow for single-cell sequencing by developing and validating best practices as well as generating and analyzing high-quality FAIR data.

Empowering the scientific community to unravel therapeutic resistance and develop smarter therapeutic strategies to better treat cancer and prevent drug resistance, PERSIST-SEQ will employ an open access model to build and sustain its benchmarking procedures and centralized European data infrastructure. This model reduces duplication of efforts, thereby promoting collaboration across disciplines and ensuring efficient adoption of state-of-the-art single cell technologies.

www.persist-seq.org

PERSIST-SEQ is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No. 101007937. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research an innovation programme and EFPIA.

Pragmatic approach to Adoptive Cell Therapy (ACT) using Tumour Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TIL in selected solid tumours (PragmaTIL) is a project funded under the Pragmatic Clinical Trials to optimise treatments for patients with refractory cancers Call. The consortium is comprised of 12 participant centres, from which VHIO is the coordinator and it aims to optimise the treatment of cancer patients with Tumour-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Adoptive Cell Therapy (TIL-ACT) to improve the clinical implementation of this treatment modality in academic hospitals.

PragmaTIL intends to reduce the treatment-related toxicities associated with high-dose interleukin 2 while maintaining the efficacy, and therefore achieve better clinical management of patients and enhance their quality of life, which are the main barriers when applying this treatment method.

This project intends to better societal opinion of these therapies, having therefore a global impact which will help in future research projects.

https://pragmatil.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-MISS-2022-CANCER-01 under grant agreement No. 101104684.

Coordinated by the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto (Porto, Portugal), the 3-year PREVENTABLE consortium is funded by the European Commission under the topic HORIZON-HLTH-2022-CARE-08-04 - Better financing models for health systems, and comprises 10 partners, including VHIO, in 8 countries.

The main aim of this project is to merge specialized clinical knowledge on rare tumor risk syndromes (RTRS) pathways of care, real-life clinical data from RTRS patients and experiences from professionals and patients, with health economic models and social sciences approaches to estimate the cost-benefit of risk-reduction interventions in RTRS and delineate guidelines for its communication among and within clinical teams and RTRS patients.

PREVENTABLE project results will be delivered to a diversity of stakeholders, including policy-makers, in order to promote the implementation of cost-effective RTRS patient-centered care in Europe.

The PREVENTABLE project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe and innovation programme HORIZON-HLTH-2022-CARE-08 under grant agreement No. 101095483.

PRecisIon Cancer Medicine RepurpOsing SystEm Using Pragmatic Clinical Trial (PRIME-ROSE) is a project funded under the Pragmatic clinical trials to optimise treatments for patients with refractory cancers Call. This project has a total of 24 members, between participants and partners, of which VHIO is one of them, to optimise treatments and enhance the quality of life.

This consortium uses the clinician-initiated family of DRUP-like innovative trials which provide access to precision medicine for cancer patients. It relies on drug rediscovery protocol-like protocols, ensuring a clinician-driven approach to bring to the forefront of cancer care precision medicine.

The project aims to contribute to the Mission Cancer goal by optimising treatment and supporting the quality of life of more than 3 million people by 2030 falling under the cluster of projects on Diagnosis and Treatment.

https://www.matrix-fkb.no/en/prime-rose/home

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-MISS-2022-CANCER-01 under grant agreement No. 101104269.

PROMISE - BioPrinted hydrogel MicrofluidicS to mimic patient-specific tumor mEtastatic microenvironment, is coordinated by the Bioengineering Institute of Catalonia (IBEC), in partnership with INL - International Iberian Nanotechnology and VHIO, and funded by the ”la Caixa” Foundation. The project partners aim to develop and apply 3D bioprinting toward improving outcomes for cancer patients.

3D bioprinting facilitates the generation of three-dimensional cell models that imitate human physiology to test new therapeutic strategies in the laboratory. These models can accurately mimic patients’ specific tumors and the main features of the tumor microenvironment.

This project, which combines 3D bioprinting and advanced liquid biopsy techniques in an organ-on-a-chip device, seeks to provide physicians with new tools to understand and monitor disease evolution in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer aimed at improving survival rates.

VHIO participates in the clinical validation of this microfluidic platform based on hydrogels that mimic the tumor microenvironment on cells derived from patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, to be validated in specific patient cohorts.

RAD51predict – Patient stratification based on DNA repair functionality for cancer precision medicine, is an ERAPerMed funded project led by VHIO. It aims to establish the prevalence of functional HRR deficiency (HRD) and its predictive value for personalized treatment with platinum salts and PARPi in breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and endometrial cancer using the RAD51 immuno-assay and genomic assays.

This project seeks to perform an economic evaluation of selecting patients for PARPi treatment based on the RAD51 assay, genomic assays, or the current selection criteria to provide functional validation of germline/somatic genetic variants of unknown significance (VUS) using patients’ data, cell lines and assessment of HRR markers in the tumor; integrate functional HRD data into existing public genomic databases; transfer the RAD51 assay as a predictive test in the clinic, and develop multiplexed protocols, automatization of image analysis, and real-time monitoring in circulating tumor cells.

This project is supported by the ERAPERMED2019-215 award, granted by Fundación Científica de la Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC FC) and by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) through the Acción Estrategica en Salud (AES) 2019, both within the ERA PerMed framework.

Incorporating a network of 27 research entities spanning 10 countries, SPECTAcolor - Screening Platform for Efficient Clinical Trials Access in Colorectal cancer, is an initiative within the framework of the research program of the EORTC, supported by Alliance Boots.

Launched in 2013, this is the first prospective fully annotated tumor samples Biobank and Biomarker analysis platform for the genetic profiling of patients suffering from advanced colorectal cancer.

www.eortc.org/blog/category/spectacolor

TACTIC - TACkling healthcare challenges through disruptive science, novel Therapies and systems medicine is a consortium funded by FORTALECE, within the State Subprogram for Institutional Strengthening, included in the State Program to Promote Scientific and Technical Research and its Transfer.

FORTALECE aims to fill those spaces left by conventional calls for research projects and human resources, to promote the qualitative transformation of research activity while simplifying certain administrative processes.

The main objectives of the call are as follows: Strengthening existing research and innovation lines at the Health Research Institutes (IIS); Promoting the generation of cutting-edge scientific knowledge aimed at improving health and addressing society's main health challenges; Promoting balanced development of actions from both consolidated research groups and emerging research groups; Addressing citizens' health priorities, both in preventive, diagnostic, curative, rehabilitative, and palliative aspects of diseases, and in generating scientific evidence as one of the bases for the quality of care and prevention in the National Health System (SNS), playing a key role in the structuring of the public R&D&I system in Biomedicine and Health Sciences.

The research of the Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus is driven through the Accredited Health Research Institute Research Institute (IIS IR-HUVH). IISIR-HUVH has been awarded the TACTIC project within the FORTALECE call.

Through the ERA-NET Sustained collaboration of national and regional programmes in cancer research activities, the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) and Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII) awarded VHIO with three TRANSCAN-3 projects funded by the EU's Horizon Europe framework program in 2021 and 2023 respectively officially granted in 2024.

Supported by the Joint Transnational Call for Proposals Next Generation cancer immunotherapy: targeting the tumour microenvironment, the first proposal entitled Evaluating the therapeutic potential of immunosuppressive paracrine cytokines in the tumour microenvironment of metastatic lesions (IParaCyts), is coordinated by Joan Seoane, co-Director of VHIO’s Preclinical and Translational Research Program. This project aims to advance and apply insights into druggable paracrine cytokines that interfere with immunotherapy in liver metastasis, addressing these matters in an integrative fashion based on the specific expertise of our partnership. The second project entitled Artificial Intelligence-based end-to-end prediction of cancer immunotherapy (TANGERINE), is coordinated at VHIO by Raquel Perez-Lopez, Principal Investigator of VHIO’s Radiomics Group. The project started in 2023 and aims to build deep learning models to predict response and toxicity to immune chekpoint blockade therapy in cancer from the analysis of histopathology and radiology images.

Both projects are supported by TRANSCAN-2 JTC 2021 and granted by the Fundación Científica de la Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (FCAECC) and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) through the Acción Estratégica en Salud (AES) 2021, within the TRANSCAN-2 framework.

TRANSCAN-2 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 643638.

UpSMART Accelerator seeks to improve experimental cancer development across the UK, Italy, and Spain, by providing early-phase clinical teams with digital healthcare products (DHP) for the real-time access to a wealth of patient data, and thus enable faster decision making.

The UpSMART Consortium consists of 23 participating institutes across Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres (ECMCs) in the UK, and Early Drug Development Units (EDDUs) in Spain and Italy. The program will test existing digital tools at these 23 phase I Units.

UpSMART will develop and provide all clinical sites with free to use access to new digital healthcare technology tools and improved approaches in trials that enable patients’ access to tomorrow’s medicines today. This project promotes the wider scale sharing and implementation of digital healthcare products as well as training in digital healthcare product approaches.

upsmart.digitalecmt.com

The program was awarded a Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Accelerator Award.

SAGITTARIUS is a precision medicine trial leveraging blood-based tumour genomics to optimize treatment in operable stage III and high-risk stage II colon cancer patients, and is funded under the Call for Pragmatic clinical trials to optimise treatments for patients with refractory cancers, which has 9 participants, including VHIO. The project aims to optimize the clinical management of locoregional stage II high-risk/stage III colon cancer (LRCC).

It has been seen that almost half of all LRCC patients relapse within two years of surgery due to micro-metastatic residual disease (MMRD), which is undetectable through imaging. SAGITTARIUS will deploy a ctDNA assay to detect the absence, presence, or persistence of MMRD, as it has been seen in retrospective studies that its detection after surgery predicts cancer recurrence with high sensitivity and specificity.

The diagnosis of MMRD will help in guiding and personalising therapeutic interventions, and it will reclassify how the disease is perceived by clinicians.

https://sagittarius-horizon.eu/en/

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-MISS-2022-CANCER-01 under grant agreement No. 101104657.

The UNIQUE Platform - UNderstanding cancer through sIngle cell seQUEncing is funded by the ”la Caixa” Foundation under the call CaixaResearch Strategic Projects – Infrastructures. This project, coordinated by VHIO, will develop and launch a pioneering research platform for understanding complex biological processes.

Tumour heterogeneity is a major issue that limits the efficacy of targeted therapies and compromises treatment outcomes. Through the use of single-cell sequencing technologies, which are cross-cutting technologies that help in understanding cancer pathophysiology, we will be allowed to detect and characterize rare stem cell populations present in the tumour microenvironment (TME) which are responsible for therapy resistance and tumour relapse, dormant tumour cells driving metastasis, low-abundance CTCs and immune cells that may hold functional relevance and clinical significance.

Thus, the UNIQUE platform will enable the detection and monitoring of the genotype and the molecular phenotypes at a single-cell resolution, overcoming the lack of it in bulk analyses.

This project has received funding from Fundació ”la Caixa”.

WIN - Worldwide Innovative Networking in personalized cancer medicine, initiated by the Institut Gustave Roussy (France) and The University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center (USA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization incorporating 32 leading organizations representing all stakeholders in personalized cancer medicine covering 18 countries and 5 continents, united by their vision to deliver on the promise of effective, personalized cancer medicine to patients worldwide.

Under the tagline WINning together, WIN was formed on the premise that members can accomplish more together than each organization can achieve working alone. Aimed at improving cancer patients’ survival and quality of life, WIN members also collaboratively design and carry out global studies designed to achieve breakthroughs for cancer patients across the globe.

www.winconsortium.org

CAT-ClinART is an EU-funded initiative aimed at enhancing the quality and safety of radiotherapy in Catalonia, ensuring equitable and high-quality oncological care for all patients. This project aligns with the European Plan to Fight Cancer and the EU4Health program, which promotes health across the European Union.

The main objective of the project is to establish a regional (autonomous community) clinical audit structure for Radiotherapy in Catalonia following the model of B-QUATRO. The main objectives that compose the project are to Develop a standardized methodology and a solid infrastructure to perform comprehensive clinical audits in Radiotherapy in Catalonia; to design and create a training course on QUATRO methodology for clinical audits and the use of QI for quality monitoring and improvement in Radiotherapy; to organize and conduct a first round of comprehensive pathology-based (prostate cancer) clinical audit campaign; To prepare a proposal for a permanent clinical audit mechanism in Radiotherapy in Catalonia; To raise awareness in the radiation therapy community concerning the importance of incorporating clinical audits as a tool to increase the quality and safety of radiotherapy procedures and finally to facilitate the resources developed and lessons learned from the project to facilitate the implementation and scaling up of clinical audits in Radiotherapy in other Spanish regions and Member States.

VHIO participates as a beneficiary in this consortium that has received funding from the European Comission within the EU4Health Programme.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program EU4H-2023-PJ-05 under grant agreement No. 101161063

Radiation therapy is commonly used after surgery for various types of cancer, including breast cancer. Despite protection and safety measures, radiation therapy can inadvertently expose the lung and heart to radiation, raising the risk of severe cardiac and pulmonary diseases and secondary tumours. The EU-funded TETRIS project aims to develop and test personalised risk scores to better predict and mitigate such risks caused by radiation therapy. Researchers will calibrate radiation doses, taking into account patient-specific data from imaging, genetics and transcriptomics.

Within TETRIS, we propose to design and test quantitative personalised low-level risk scores based on dose-response relationships already published in the literature and refined risk scores which merge patient-specific features (from imaging, genetics and transcriptomics) with RT dose.

The project also proposes to explore the opportunities and challenges of applying digital twins (DTs) in RT safety. We will use the historical cohort to develop the prototypes and evaluate the gain we can have using digital twins for risk assessment instead of model-based risk scores.

Using a prospective collection of detailed patient data, we will demonstrate the possibility of refining DTs, allowing a deeper description of the single patient and a broader description of the patients follow-up.

The value of the refined DTs could shape investments in data collection and computational resources for radioprotection.

VHIO participates as a beneficiary in this call funded by the European Comission within the EURATOM call and coordinated by IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Dei Tumori.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-EURATOM-2023-NRT-01 under grant agreement No. 101166699

Synthetic Data Generation Framework for Integrated Validation of Use Cases and AI Healthcare Applications. Synthia started on September 2024. A EU consortium of more than 12M€ and 32 beneficiaries. VHIO participates in this consortium, represented by Dr. Rodrigo Dienstmann.

Access to high-quality medical data is crucial for advancing healthcare research, but patient privacy concerns and strict regulations limit data availability. Traditional methods of anonymising data often fall short of protecting sensitive information. Additionally, the complexity of healthcare data, including genomics and imaging, makes it challenging to generate accurate synthetic alternatives. Without reliable solutions, progress in datadriven healthcare innovation is hindered. In this context, the EU-funded SYNTHIA project tackles this issue by improving Synthetic Data Generation (SDG) for healthcare applications. Focused on six diseases, SYNTHIA develops new techniques to create realistic, multimodal, and longitudinal data, while ensuring transparency and security. The open SYNTHIA platform will provide researchers with validated synthetic datasets and tools, accelerating healthcare advancements without compromising patient privacy.

SYNTHIA is an ambitious collaboration between public and private institutions to facilitate the responsible use of Synthetic Data (SD) in healthcare applications. The project will improve the methodological and technical aspects of SD Generation (SDG) by developing new techniques and advancing established ones for different data modalities, including genomics and imaging, to improve the generation of realistic multimodal and longitudinal data.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program HORIZON-JU-IHI-2023-05-04 under grant agreement No. 101172872

The European Comprehensive Cancer Center Network

As a successor to the Joint Action CraNE, which ended in September 2024, the Joint Action “European Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centers” (EUnetCCC) was launched in October 2024. The aim of the European network of Comprehensive Cancer Centers (CCC) is to connect CCC structures across Europe in order to provide all patients with access to high-quality research and care structures. The network will serve to establish research and care structures in the exchange of best practice, resources and research results in the Member States.

The main objectives of the joint action include to prepare the necessary preconditions, administrative, professional and those related to high-quality performance towards Networks of Comprehensive Cancer Centres; to link the development of Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks (CCCNs) in EU level with CCCs established in individual Member States and to provide an assessment on sustainability and feasibility of networking of CCCs.

VHIO participates in this Joint Action, being one of the first centers in the region to obtain the Comprehensive Cancer Center Accreditation by OECI.

VHIO participates as a beneficiary in this call funded by the European Comission within the EURATOM call and coordinated by IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Dei Tumori.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program EU4H-2023-JA-3-IBA under grant agreement No. 101183407

JANE is a Joint Action aiming at shaping seven new Networks of Expertise in the cancer field in the following domains: personalized primary prevention; survivorship; palliative care; omic technologies; hi-tech medical resources; one or more complex & poor-prognosis cancer(s); young adults with cancer.

The ambition of this Joint Action is to pave the way towards new Networks of Expertise able to function effectively, building on previous and ongoing EU networking experiences, and finding solutions rooted in the European oncology community. Health care networking can be a privileged hallmark of the EU, having the potential to target the health of its citizens in a highly coordinated fashion.

The project’s management goal is to pave the way towards the creation of 7 Networks of Expertise, with the final deliverable for each being a call for expressions of interest. One Work Package will be assigned to each Network of Expertise. It is envisaged to have 5 Transversal Task Forces and one additional Work Package that will operate transversally to all the Work Packages which focus directly on the creation of the Networks.

A total of 16 beneficiaries from all over Europe including VHIO work together towards a common goal, which is to set the Networks of Expertise.

https://jane-project.eu/project/the-project/

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon program EU4H-2023-JA-3-IBA under grant agreement No. 101183265