Research infrastructures services to support research addressing cancer

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services enhancing and increasing society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in the health areas, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications;
• advancement of knowledge for personalised cancer prevention strategies and treatments;
• accelerated availability of solutions and products to patients in need;
• wider access to specialised R&I services to underpin the competitiveness of the European industry and of biotech SMEs developing new personalised cancer prevention strategies and treatments.

Proposals under this topic aim at integrating at EU level and providing access to a wide and inclusive portfolio of complementary research infrastructure services, including data services, and customised workflows supporting R&I projects along the development pipeline from discovery research to personalised treatment of cancer. Services should also support activities addressing the socio-economic dimension of cancer, the development of evidence-based public health measures and patient-centred approaches, as well as regulatory aspects of novel biomedical products or relevant biomarkers.

Proposals will support the provision of trans-national and/or virtual access to researchers as well as training for using the infrastructures, and activities to improve, customise and combine the services the infrastructures provide, so as to facilitate and integrate the access procedures and to further develop the remote or virtual provision of services.

In order to facilitate user access, different interfaces could be developed, offering tailored resources and services for different types of cancer or different classes of users.

Proposals should adhere to the guidelines and principles of the European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures^[1].

Proposals could foster cross-fertilisation by offering technologies involved in cancer advanced therapies to research projects targeting other major chronic disease.

Data management (and related ethics issues), interoperability, as well as the connection of digital services (e.g. data services) to the European Open Science Cloud, should be duly addressed.

Appropriate links and complementarities will be ensured with the Horizon Europe Mission on cancer^[2]. Other major European or international initiatives, including the EU Beating Cancer Plan and the new EU biomedical research agency recently announced by the European Commission, should be duly taken into account. Whenever appropriate, proposals should foster the use and deployment of (open) global standards.

Proposals should make available to researchers the widest and most comprehensive portfolio of research infrastructures services which are relevant for the scope. To this extent, they should involve, as beneficiaries or as third parties, the necessary interdisciplinary set of research infrastructures of European interest^[3] that provide such services. The inclusiveness of the proposal will be taken into account in the Excellence score. Proposals including only few of the research infrastructures services relevant to the scope will be scored lower.

Proposals should also look to establish active collaboration with clinical centres to facilitate translation of research results into clinical practice.

Research infrastructures from third countries^[4] may be involved when appropriate, in particular when they offer complementary or more advanced services than those available in Europe.

Proposals should consider the inclusion of infrastructures that can facilitate a rapid transition of research findings to innovations and therefore, to society.

Proposals should include an outreach and engagement plan to actively advertise its services to targeted research communities and, if applicable, to relevant industries, including SMEs.

To identify and better exploit related synergies, share results and avoid overlaps, grants awarded under this topic should cooperate with those awarded under topic HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-06. To this extent, proposals should provide for dedicated activities and earmark appropriate resources.

Proposals are expected to exploit synergies and to ensure complementarity and coherence with other EU grants supporting access provision.

Proposals will include the list of services/installations^[5] opened by research infrastructures for trans-national or virtual access and the amounts of units of access made available for users. Further conditions and requirements relating to access provisions that applicants should fulfil when drafting a proposal are given in the “Specific features for Research Infrastructures” section of this Work Programme. Compliance with these provisions will be taken into account during evaluation.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/pdf/2016_charterforaccessto-ris.pdf

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/horizon-europe/missions-horizon-europe/cancer_en

[3] A research infrastructure is of European interest when is able to attract users from EU or associated countries other than the country where the infrastructure is located. This includes ESFRI and ERIC infrastructures.

[4] See the Eligibility conditions for this topic.

[5] “Installation” means a part or a service of a research infrastructure that can be used independently from the rest. A research infrastructure consists of one or more installations.