EULAC Clinical Trials Helpdesk
This tool has been developed within the framework of the EULAC-PerMed project. It aims to provide information on regulatory and funding agencies regarding clinical trials in Latin America and Europe, and to facilitate the establishment of partnerships in clinical trials on personalised medicine across countries and regions.
If you are a clinical researcher interested in establishing partnerships or collaborating with ongoing projects on personalized medicine research, reach out to us at helpdesk@eulac-permed.eu with your contact information, your laboratory’s information, your areas of interest in personalised medicine, and if you are actively looking for partners for multinational clinical trials.
The information we provide on regulatory/funding requirements is based on past surveys conducted in collaboration with the participants of the project, and encompasses selected countries from Latin America and Europe. It is not exhaustive, but will continue to be updated.
International organizations and programs that can fund PM research in LAC and EU countries:
The findings of a dedicated survey have been summarized here, presenting the main areas of interest for collaborations in clinical trials in Personalised Medicine. The survey was carried out in December 2020, and was circulated to stakeholders, participants, and potential collaborators of the EULAC PerMed project.
A long version of the survey aimed at collecting information on areas of interest in research or ongoing projects related to Personalised Medicine, and a shorter version was focused on regulatory and funding information. A total of 28 participants answered the survey (26 for the long version, 2 for the short version). Most of the respondents were from Argentina and Brazil (five from each country). In total, eight (30.8%) of the respondents were from Europe, with the majority of the participants being from Italy (three).
Figure 1. Countries of the survey’s participants.
Areas of interest in personalized medicine research
We asked participants to list a maximum of five areas of interest in personalized medicine research, and five potential areas of collaboration in personalized medicine research. Since these were open questions, we generated word clouds to summarize the participants’ responses using R’s ‘wordcloud’ package. We analyzed responses for all participants, for respondents from Latin America and for those from Europe.
Based on our results, cancer, bioinformatics, genomics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and health systems were prioritized by participants as areas of interest in personalized medicine research (Figure 2). Similar results were observed for participants from Latin America (Figure 3), whereas the areas of interest identified by participants from Europe were cancer, radiomics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, imaging, modelling, and machine learning (Figure 4).
Figure 2. Areas of interest in personalized medicine research, all participants
Figure 3. Areas of interest in personalized medicine research (participants from Latin America)
Figure 4. Areas of interest in personalized medicine research (participants from Europe)
Potential areas of collaboration between Latin America and Europe
When asked about potential areas of collaboration across regions, the areas most frequently mentioned were health data, cancer, genetics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, imaging, sequencing, and rare diseases (Figure 5). Responses from participants from Latin America identified similar potential areas of collaboration. Genomics, and analysis of genetic variants were also areas frequently identified by participants from this region (Figure 6). On the other hand, according to participants from Europe, potential areas of collaboration in personalized medicine were cancer, data analysis, medical imaging, and omics (Figure 7).
Figure 5. Potential areas of collaboration in personalized medicine research, all participants
Figure 6. Potential areas of collaboration in personalized medicine research (participants from Latin America)
Figure 7. Potential areas of collaboration in personalized medicine research (participants from Europe)
