Action grants for ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’ including ‘Genomic for Public Health’

EXPECTED RESULTS AND IMPACT
The ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’ and the ‘Genomic for Public Health’ actions will help Member States to develop guidelines and recommendations to better determine who and what to test, organise health services to implement genetic testing, and provide specific education and training for health workers to advance our understanding of cancer control. Ultimately, individuals and cancer patients will benefit on a large-scale of a high quality and viable way to prevent cancer, to diagnose and treat it.

SPECIFIC ACTION LEVEL INDICATORS FOR REPORTING PURPOSES

Applicants must include data on the following indicators in their regular reporting activities in case of award, and must be prepared to include additional specific indicators where needed:

Sub-topic (a) - ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’ project

- Number and type of available ‘next generation sequencing’ technology proposed for application of personalised cancer diagnosis and treatments.

- Number of cancer centres, which are skilled and are offering ‘next generation sequencing’ technology for application of personalised cancer diagnosis and treatment.

- Member States and Regions that have a capacity to offer ‘next generation sequencing’ technology for application of personalised cancer diagnosis and treatment.

- Number of patients who have benefitted from ‘next generation sequencing’ technology for personalised cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Sub-topic (b) - ‘Genomic for Public Health’ project

- Number and type of implementable public health measures to identify individual genetic profiles, indicating susceptibility of individuals to develop a certain type of cancer.

- Number of cancer centres, which are skilled and routinely offering approaches and measures to identify individual genetic profiles, indicating susceptibility of individuals to develop a certain type of cancer.

- Member States and Regions that have the capacity to offer approaches and measures to identify individual genetic profiles, indicating susceptibility of individuals to develop a certain type of cancer.

- Number of patients who have benefitted from approaches and measures to identify individual genetic profiles, indicating susceptibility of individuals to develop a certain type of cancer.

POLICY CONTEXT

Cancer is strongly driven by genomic modifications, and new technological approaches are now available for diagnostic, therapeutic and personalised risk-assessment for prevention. These new approaches have a relevant positive impact on the outcome of cancer care. Therefore, there is a need to support access to such measures while guaranteeing a viable and a high standard of performance of these new techniques.

This action supports the implementation of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan objective to ensure high standards in cancer care and implements the EU4Health Programme’s general objective of improving and fostering health in the Union (Article 3, point (a)) through the specific objectives defined in Article 4, points (a) and (g) of Regulation (EU) 2021/522).

OBJECTIVES

The new ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’ initiative, and the ‘Genomic for Public Health’ project will help Member States to improve access for individuals and cancer patients and survivors to prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer through personalised medicine, by upscaling available innovation in the field of innovative cancer diagnosis and treatment.

SCOPE AND ACTIVITIES
The proposals in this topic may involve work in one or two streams:

Applicants shall target their proposal to one or both of the action subtopics (a, b) described below and indicate that clearly in the proposal.

Sub-topic (a) - - ‘Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All’ initiative: It will use the ‘next generation sequencing’ technology for a quick and efficient application of personalised cancer diagnosis and treatment. The action will scale up the already available results in genetic profiling of patients and tumour cells allowing cancer centres to share such cancer profiles with a view to apply the same or similar diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to patients with comparable cancer profiles across the Union.

Sub-topic (b) - ‘Genomic for Public Health’ project: which is expected, to scale up the ‘1+ Million Genome Initiative’ results, to translate them into implementable public health measures to address cancer prevention on the basis of specific individual genetic profiles, which indicates the susceptibility of individuals to develop a certain type of cancer. Therefore, the project will open new perspectives to personalised risk-assessment and targeted cancer prevention.