Cancer complex nature requires integration of advanced research data across national boundaries to enable progress. Indeed, the Horizon Europe mission board for cancer has identified access to data, knowledge and digital services - accessible across the European Research Area through federated infrastructures - as a key enabling condition for success. The better we organise cancer data across Europe, the better and faster we can bring the fruits of new biological and technical innovations to the benefit of EU citizens/patients. EOSC4Cancer will make cancer genomics, imaging, medical, clinical, environmental and socio-economics data accessible, using and enhancing existing federated and interoperable systems for securely identifying, sharing, processing and reusing FAIR cancer data across borders, and it will offer them via community-driven analysis environments. EOSC4Cancer provision of well curated datasets will be essential for advanced analytics and computational methods to be reproducible and robust, including machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches. EOSC4Cancer use-cases will cover the patient journey from cancer prevention to diagnosis to treatment, laying the foundation of data trajectories and workflows for future cancer mission projects. EOSC4Cancer brings together a comprehensive consortium of cancer research centres, research infrastructures, leading research groups, hospitals and supercomputing centres from 14 European countries. To make the developments sustainable, these will be offered as part of the research infrastructures partners services portfolio, in connection with the EOSC ecosystem and to serve the European Cancer Mission, which will be possible via the engagement 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.
Protein structure prediction has long been considered the “Holy Grail” of structural biology. The recent success of AlphaFold has ushered in a new era of highly accurate structure prediction, bringing to light the secrets hidden in the three-dimensional structures of globular proteins, increasing our understanding about their structural features and molecular function. However, a large proportion of the proteomes from all domains of life are rich in sequences that do not fold into regular structures, commonly known as non-globular proteins (NGPs). NGPs comprise intrinsically disordered regions, repeats, low-complexity sequences, aggregation-prone and phase-separating sequences, and are implicated in a range of age-related diseases. Their heterogeneous structural states and low sequence complexity challenge current experimental structure determination techniques and machine learning (ML) methods for structure prediction, making the molecular understanding of their sequence-structure-dynamics-function relationship difficult. The recent improvements of ML approaches and advances in determining NGP structural ensembles call for a timely re-assessment of the interplay between experiments and computation. The ML4NGP Action aims to establish an interdisciplinary pan-European network to favour this interplay, fostering experimental frameworks designed to provide information to computational methods, and novel computational methods developed, trained and benchmarked with experimental data. ML4NGP will enhance the primary experimental data generation (WG1), promote integrative structural biology approaches (WG2), benchmark the state-of-the-art ML methods (WG3) and improve the functional characterization of NGPs (WG4). The Action will support its scientific objectives through policies that sustain free knowledge exchange, inclusiveness and training of young researchers who will lead future innovations in this field.
SciLake’s mission is to build upon the OpenAIRE ecosystem and EOSC services to (a) facilitate and empower the creation, interlinking and maintenance of SKGs and the execution of data science and graph mining queries on top of them, (b) contribute to the democratization of scholarly content and the related added value services implementing a community-driven management approach, and (c) offer advanced, AI-assisted services that exploit customised perspectives of scientific merit to assist the navigation of the vast scientific knowledge space. In brief, SciLake will develop, support, and offer customisable services to the research community following a two-tier service architecture. First, it will offer a comprehensive, open, transparent, and customisable scientific data-lake-as-a-service (service tier 1), empowering and facilitating the creation, interlinking, and maintenance of SKGs both across and within different scientific disciplines. On top of that, it will build and offer a tier of customisable, AI-assisted services that facilitate the navigation of scholarly content following a scientific merit-driven approach (tier 2), focusing on two merit aspects which are crucial for the research community at large: impact and reproducibility. The services in both tiers will leverage advanced AI techniques (text and graph mining) that are going to exploit and extend existing technologies provided by SciLake’s technology partners. Finally, to showcase the value of the provided services and their capability to address current and anticipated needs of different research communities, four scientific domains (neuroscience, cancer research, transportation, and energy) have been selected to serve as pilots. For each, the developed services will be customised, to accommodate differences in research procedures, practices, impact measures and types of research objects, and will be validated and evaluated through real-world use cases.
The EVERSE project aims to create a framework for research software and code excellence, collaboratively designed and championed by the research communities across five EOSC Science Clusters and national Research Software Expertise Centres, in pursuit of building a European network of Research Software Quality and setting the foundations of a future Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence. This framework for research software excellence will incorporate aspects involving community curation, quality assessment, and best practices for research software. This collective knowledge will be captured in the Research Software Quality toolkit (RSQkit), a knowledge base to gather and curate expertise that will contribute to high-quality software and code across different disciplines.
Odyssey is a web portal in the form of a user-friendly interface that will allow researchers, educators and citizens to navigate into the world of molecular biodiversity using Greece and Norway as case studies, two countries with characteristic and unique biodiversity wealth, representative for Mediterranean and Nordic types of ecosystems respectively. Based on existing sources of information and prototype applications that are available for specific regions and taxa, this project aims to link actual efforts and develop a new interface to offer diverse functionalities for data exploration and analysis such as descriptive statistics, graphs, maps, customizable data filters, and dynamic visualisations.
The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is on the rise, and yet, there remains a lack of consensus on standardised approaches for responsible implementation. In Europe, there is a strong push to regulate AI, particularly in high-impact societal applications such as biomedicine and healthcare. The objective of AHEAD is to create a transdisciplinary, diverse and global community drawing on the expertise of professionals in biomedicine, ethics, AI development, software engineering, sociology, psychology, law, gender studies, and relevant stakeholders, dedicated to the ongoing effort of tackling challenges and setting important standards in an ever-changing landscape. Together, the community will gather, consolidate, and put into practice established principles and guidelines, building a methodology and a platform to evaluate AI-based systems for biomedical and healthcare applications to ensure the compliance with legal, ethical, technical, scientific, and regulatory standards. The project will extend the fucntionalities of OpenEBench, ELIXIR’s benchmarking platform for bioinformatics tools, to provide a platform for these assessments. The community will also establish an observatory to collect and curate existing guidelines, best practices, and principles for AI assessment in biomedicine and healthcare across multiple disciplines (technical, societal, legal, etc.). AHEAD will encourage responsible AI innovation through constant collaboration and knowledge exchanges, to continuously meet the demands of the fast-changing AI landscape and ensure that quality healthcare for all people is never compromised and only enhanced. The proposed project is the beginning of a sustained endeavour that would greatly benefit from mobility grants to enhance community bonds and foster collaborative efforts toward this goal.
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 will provide the research community with approaches for transparent benchmarking of alternative SDG methods for specific applications, identify and establish evaluation metrics and methodologies, and contribute to the standardisation of an evaluation assessment framework for SD. Robust evidence of SD applicability in a set of use cases across a broad spectrum of medical conditions will be crucial to demonstrate the potential of SD to accelerate data-driven solutions of equivalent quality to those derived from real patient data. Furthermore, legal and regulatory implications of SD use will be analysed with the aim of delivering an assurance framework to guide secure SD utilization in healthcare. These significant breakthroughs will be implemented through the open SYNTHIA federated platform, facilitating responsible SD use by the health research community. The platform will facilitate users´ long-term access to extensively validated, reusable synthetic datasets, as well as to SDG workflows and SD assessment frameworks. The federated infrastructure will rely on extended open-source frameworks for interoperability with other data-sharing infrastructures in the context of the European Health Data Space. A multidisciplinary collaboration of SDG developers, FAIR data experts, clinical researchers, developers of therapies and data-based tools, legal experts, socio-economic analysts, regulatory, policy advocacy, and communication experts will provide a 360º vision on how to advance healthcare applications through SD use.
METAPLANTCODE presents a unique collaborative and transnational approach to test, optimise, harmonise and recommend best practices for plant metabarcoding for samples with varying degrees of species complexity, contamination, and DNA degradation using case studies across Europe. The innovative combination of accelerated molecular plant monitoring and the integration of diverse biodiversity data with optimised and automated pipelines will fill knowledge gaps on the state of biodiversity, interdependencies, and dynamics. The METAPLANTCODE project aims to test and optimise pan-European case studies on metabarcoding, provide best practice recommendations, optimise analysis pipelines for species identification, and create easy-to-use reference databases. The project will identify and specify gaps, publish best practice documents on FAIR data publishing of plant metabarcode data to GBIF and the INSDC databases, and implement ELIXIR-compatible multimodal DL models in novel tools for stand-alone metabarcoding analyses using different data sources. The project will also enhance species identification accuracy through GBIF records and metadata, and map regional, national, and international botanical taxonomic checklists, red lists, and floras to the Catalogue of Life (COL) through COL ChecklistBank.
Coordinated by Health-RI and with a consortium of 40 partners from 20 European countries, the project will support Member States and Associated Countries in setting up National Cancer Data Nodes. These Nodes will promote the development of standardized services for managing and sharing cancer data nationally and across borders, connecting different national actors. Despite vast amounts of cancer-related data in Europe, fragmentation and lack of interoperability hinder progress in cancer research and treatment. CANDLE addresses this by establishing trusted nodes to connect data, tools, and expertise across borders. These National Cancer Data Nodes will facilitate access to cancer data from across Europe. Cancer researchers can then access more data than is currently accessible – and help Europe better understand cancer. This can fuel the development of new cancer treatments, diagnostics, and better information to patients, survivors, and carers – and much more. CANDLE will work toward this by: Promoting the development and implementation of National Cancer Data Nodes in participating countries, to support users in handling their data with the right applications and underlying infrastructure. Promoting harmonisation and standardisation of cancer data. Supporting data discoverability, accessibility, and reuse in line with FAIR principles. Enabling cross-border, GDPR-compliant data sharing for research and innovation. Benefiting from the European Health Data Space and contributing to the UNCAN.eu European Cancer Data Infrastructure.
The Beyond 1 Million Genomes plus (B1MGplus) project is helping create a European cross-border network of genomic and corresponding clinical data to improve healthcare outcomes. The project provides coordination and support to the 1+ Million Genomes initiative (1+MG), which is the commitment of 25 EU countries plus Norway to enable secure access to genomic and corresponding clinical data across Europe, supporting research, health policy and personalised healthcare.
The NeuroHEALTH project aims to address the growing challenge of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which affect millions worldwide and impose significant social and economic burdens. The project will harness the potential of neglected natural products (NPs), like alkaloids, from psychotropic plants and mushrooms that till recently had regulatory constrains. The integration of state of the art phytochemical analysis, with advanced computational tools will accelerate the discovery of novel NPs. In vitro and in vivo testing assays including zebrafish models will evaluate the safety and efficacy to reveal compounds of interest, that can enhance cognitive health and improve quality of life. Bioactive extracts and NPs will be scaled up and formulated in combination with a market analysis, sustainability and intellectual properties assessment will ensure that findings are relevant and applicable. Through strategic secondments and staff exchanges among academic and industry partners, NeuroHEALTH will foster interdisciplinary collaboration, enhancing knowledge transfer and innovation. Workshops, conferences, and outreach activities will engage diverse stakeholders, including professionals, policymakers, and the general public, promoting awareness of the project's findings and their implications for health care. By bridging the gap between traditional knowledge and modern science, NeuroHEALTH aims to deliver impactful solutions for neurodegenerative diseases, ultimately contributing to healthier aging populations. This timely initiative not only addresses urgent societal needs but also positions Europe at the forefront of innovative research in natural product-based therapeutics.
The 21st century is marked by a triple challenge: meeting the nutritional needs of a rapidly growing global population, addressing climate change, and creating a more sustainable and progressive agricultural model. Against this backdrop, Precision Plant Breeding (PPB) emerges as a pioneering and innovative solution that leverages advances in genome editing to target and efficiently improve the quality and yield of tomatoes. The Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs) technology offers the ability to modify the genome with precision, enabling the creation of new, elite varieties in short time and high-throughput manner without introducing foreign genetic material. The selected gene target is a critical transcription factor (NF-YA) involved in plant development, tomato quality, and characteristics, influencing multiple genes. As a cutting-edge technology, PPB holds promise for advancing crop improvement across various plant species, contributing to the addressing of challenges related to food security, sustainable agriculture, and climate change.
The tomato is one of the world's most vital crops, playing a critical role in global food security. Traditional varieties are particularly valuable not only for their rich flavor but also for their adaptability to low-input agricultural systems, which makes them key for climate-resilient and sustainable farming initiatives. This project focuses on Greek heirloom tomato varieties to breed new hybrids that rival commercial counterparts in quality, yield, and cost-effectiveness. A central innovation of the project is the integration of biochar—an organic soil enhancer derived from plant matter—into greenhouse cultivation. This approach improves soil moisture retention, nutrient levels, and overall fertility while aligning with low-input practices. Conducted as a large-scale pilot program in Preveza, the initiative aims to boost agricultural productivity, stimulate local economic growth, ensure sustainable natural resource use, and safeguard the environment. By merging traditional knowledge with modern techniques, the research seeks to create a model for resilient, eco-friendly farming tailored to regional needs.
The potato is a top priority for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, playing a vital role in mitigating global food insecurity. However, the sector's reliance on traditional farming practices is facing significant challenges, particularly in the face of escalating climate threats that demand the adoption of sustainable solutions. In Greece, the sharp decline in domestic potato production (a 60% drop between 1995 and 2022) has exposed the vulnerabilities of farmers to market pressure and competitive disadvantage. Reversing this trend and restoring production levels to those of the 1990s would be a game-changer for the country's food security and a crucial step towards exiting the crisis. With this goal in mind, a research project in Perithori, Drama, is investigating the effects of foliar biostimulant applications on potato cultivation, a globally recognized potato product, by optimizing treatment protocols with a focus on precise quantities and timing. The project also delves into the biochemical mechanisms underlying improved crop production and disease resistance. This innovative "package" of solutions – a new tool for farmers – facilitates a reduction in chemical interventions, paving the way for a more sustainable and environmentally friendly farming practice. Furthermore, the project leverages satellite monitoring of crops using satellites and autonomous aerial vehicles (UAVs), enhancing real-time surveillance and decision-making support.
INAB-CERTH will perform during the study conduct the following assessments that are required by the study protocol and detailed in Exhibit A: 1. NGS Immunoprofiling experiments 2. WES experiments 3. RNA seq experiments 4. Peptide pools. Functional T cell assays.
The aim of CLLon was the dissection of the processes related to the B-cell receptor immunoglobulin (BcR IG) that occur throughout the natural history of CLL and contribute to disease ontogeny and evolution through in-depth immunogenetic and functional studies of the clonotypic BcR IG. To reach solid conclusions, the study group comprised individuals with MBL of both subtypes: (i) low-count MBL (LC-MBL) and (ii) high-count MBL (HC-MBL), as well as patients with CLL with distinct clinical courses, ranging from ultra-stable (asymptomatic for at least 10 years) to rapidly progressive. A multiparametric characterization of the BcR properties in MBL and CLL was performed at different levels: (i) IG heavy and light chain sequence composition, (ii) BcR reactivity profile and (iii) (classical and autonomous) BcR signaling capacity.
The Joint Action on integrating prevention, testing and link to care strategies across HIV, Viral Hepatitis, TB & STIs in Europe” (INTEGRATE) has the overall objective to improve the understanding and implement integrated activities related to early diagnosis of HIV, viral hepatitis, TB and STIs and linkage to prevention and care in partner countries. A number of tools have been developed to reduce transmission, optimize early diagnosis and linkage to care for one or more of these four diseases. INTEGRATE will map relevant existing tools for cross-linking. A peer-review process will identify which of these tools are complimentary or redundant for other disease(s), and which could be adapted or require further innovation. HIV, viral hepatitis, TB and STIs are cross-borders public health threats of concern to Europe that affect vulnerable populations disproportionately and require personalised interventions. As multiple dimensional approaches are required to reduce the public health burden, the most optimal profile of approaches that provide additive effects (and that are reasonably cost-effective) should be identified and implemented broadly. INTEGRATE provides a platform to disseminate and exchange best practice among Member States and facilitate discussions on innovations and emerging issues within the four diseases. In this respect, INTEGRATE is a shared European effort that extends beyond the partners and can create important synergies across European stakeholders, projects and initiatives.
Europe is paying a heavy price for chronic diseases (CD): it has been estimated that CD cost EU economies 115 billion € or 0.8% of GDP annually; and this figure does not include the additional loss in terms of lower employment rates and productivity of people living with chronic health problems. However, the aspiration is a health-promoting Europe, free of preventable CD, premature death and avoidable disability could be possible. Initiatives on CD should build on four cornerstones: health promotion and primary prevention as a way to reduce the burden of CD; patient empowerment; tackling functional decline and quality of life as the main consequences of CD, and making health systems sustainable and responsive to the aging of our populations associated with the epidemiological transition (an increase in incidence of CD and extended life expectancy) whose consequence is an increasing prevalence of CD. In this Joint Action, CHRODIS-PLUS, our goal is to support Member States through cross-national initiatives identified in JA-CHRODIS to reduce the burden of CD, while assuring health systems sustainability and responsiveness. CHRODIS-PLUS aims to promote the implementation of policies and practices with demonstrated success in each of the four cornerstones mentioned, in closely monitored implementation experiences that can be validated before scaling them up. Practices to be implemented will be based on the collection of policies, strategies and interventions that started in JA-CHRODIS and in its outputs such as the Integrated Multimorbidity Care Model or the recommendations for Diabetes Quality criteria or national plans.
ΜyPal aims to foster early palliative care for cancer patients by leveraging patient reported outcome (PRO) systems through their adaptation to the personal needs of the cancer patient and his/her caregiver(s). Through this intervention, MyPal aspires to empower cancer patients (and their family members) in capturing more accurately their conditions, communicate them with a seamless and effective way to their healthcare providers and, ultimately, foster the time for action through the rapid identification of important deviations in the patient’s state and QoL. Providing this information in a timely and comprehensive manner throughout the disease course will reinforce the potential for applying a patient-centred and integrated palliative care approach for cancer with the participation of all relevant healthcare providers (i.e. oncologists, specialized physicians, psychologists, nurses), which is necessary to cope with the specific disease. In order to accomplish its mission, MyPal will exploit technological advances on digital health to support patients, family members and healthcare providers in gaining value through this systematic and comprehensive PRO-based intervention. Overall, the foreseen advancement through MyPal reflects a paradigm shift from passive patient reporting based on conventional PRO approaches to active patient engagement and a closed-loop approach (bridging the gap between patient reporting and effective actions by healthcare providers to meet the varying patient needs) for coping with palliative care challenges in cancer.
Το επιστημονικό αντικείμενο του έργου συνίσταται στη σύμφωνη με τους κανόνες της επιστήμης γονιδιωματική επιτήρηση του ιού SARS-CoV-2, σύμφωνα με τις οδηγίες της αρμόδιας Επιτροπής καταπολέμησης Λοιμογόνων Παραγόντων του Υπουργείου Υγείας και τις κατευθυντήριες οδηγίες του Ευρωπαϊκού Κέντρου Πρόληψης και Ελέγχου Νόσων (ECDC). Ο σκοπός της παρούσας προγραμματικής σύμβασης έγκειται στη συνεργασία των συμβαλλομένων μερών, η οποία αποσκοπεί στη διασφάλιση της επίτευξης του κοινού τους στόχου για την αντιμετώπιση του ιού SARS-CoV-2 και για την κάλυψη των αναγκών εργαστηριακής επιτήρησης σε επίπεδο γονιδιώματος του ιού SARS-CoV-2, μέσω της αλληλούχησης.
Το επιστημονικό αντικείμενο του έργου συνίσταται στη σύμφωνη με τους κανόνες της επιστήμης γονιδιωματική επιτήρηση του ιού SARS-CoV-2, σύμφωνα με τις οδηγίες της αρμόδιας Επιτροπής καταπολέμησης Λοιμογόνων Παραγόντων του Υπουργείου Υγείας και τις κατευθυντήριες οδηγίες του Ευρωπαϊκού Κέντρου Πρόληψης και Ελέγχου Νόσων (ECDC). Ο σκοπός της παρούσας προγραμματικής σύμβασης έγκειται στη συνεργασία των συμβαλλομένων μερών, η οποία αποσκοπεί στη διασφάλιση της επίτευξης του κοινού τους στόχου για την αντιμετώπιση του ιού SARS-CoV-2 και για την κάλυψη των αναγκών εργαστηριακής επιτήρησης σε επίπεδο γονιδιώματος του ιού SARS-CoV-2, μέσω της αλληλούχησης.
