European Commission invests €195 million under Horizon 2020

On 11 April, the European Commission announced that it will invest €195 million under Horizon 2020 to improve the research and innovation (R&I) potential in seven Member States (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Portugal). Among the 13 proposals, the Centre for New Methods in Computational Diagnostics and Personalised Therapy is of particular interest for the Avicenna Alliance, because its mission includes the development of computation-based solutions for diagnostics and therapy to improve personalised patient treatment.

Key points

Through Horizon 2020, the current EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, €195 million will be dedicated to the development of 13 new “centres of excellence” in seven Member States. These proposals were selected under the Teaming programme of Horizon 2020, which aims to support institution building in countries where research and innovative are weak.

Among the selected projects, the health-related ones are:

• “Biobanking and the Cyprus Human Genome Project”, by the University of Cyprus;
• “Centre for New Methods in Computational Diagnostics and Personalised Therapy”, by the National Centre for Research and Development (Poland);
• “Centre of Excellence in Multifunctional Materials for Industrial and Medical Applications”, by the National Centre for Nuclear Research (Poland); and
• “Multidisciplinary Institute of Ageing”, by the Centro Regional Coordination and Development Commission (Portugal).

Next steps

The Commission expects that these centres will contribute to boosting R&I performance, encouraging the scientific community to develop new products and processes in the health sector and forming partnerships with leading scientific institutions across Europe.

The final grant agreement with the Commission will be signed in the second half of 2019. After that, each project will receive around €15 million to meet its objectives.

Analysis

The Centre for New Methods in Computational Diagnostics and Personalised Therapy in Krakow will be lead by an old friend of the VPH community, Marian Bubak and will see the participation of the Insigneo institute in Sheffield.

The goal is to build a world-class facility to support in silico medicine in terms of computational and software infrastructure, to serve academia, clinical services but also the industrial sector. More importantly, its mission includes:

• Development of new computation-based solutions for diagnostics and therapy in daily healthcare to improve personalised patient treatment;
• Enhanced growth of SMEs which deal with technologies and services for novel personalised diagnostics and treatment strategies; as well as
• Advancement of algorithms, models and technologies involved in personalised medicine.

Background

Horizon 2020 is the current EU R&I programme, encompassing nearly €80 billion in funds over the period 2014-2020, besides private investments attracted by the funding. It will be followed by Horizon Europe Programme, which will introduce new features such as the European Innovation Council, missions to promote research results and new forms of partnerships.