Projects

The Beyond 1 Million Genomes (B1MG) consortium will provide coordination and support to the 1+ Million Genomes initiative (1+MG), which is based upon the commitment of 21 European Member States and Norway that have signed the Declaration ‘Towards access to at least 1 million sequenced genomes in the EU by 2022’...

The BeYond-COVID project aims to make COVID-19 data accessible to scientists in laboratories but also to anyone who can use it, such as medical staff in hospitals or government officials. Going beyond SARS-CoV-2 data, the project will provide a framework for making data from other infectious diseases open and accessible to everyone.

c4c (conect4children) is a large collaborative European network that aims to facilitate the development of new drugs and other therapies for the entire paediatric population.

The canSERV project aims to defragment the landscape of European cancer research and will enable academia and industry access to cross-cutting services and support from basic science up to clinical translation to foster personalised medicine for cancer patients. The project will contribute to the EU Cancer Mission through the provision of innovative services.

CoMeCT is ensuring enhanced European clinical research preparedness and response capacity to infectious disease (ID) outbreaks with epidemic potential through sustained strategic and scientific coordination of adaptive platform trials and cohort studies. Uniting existing coordination initiatives into a single coherent coordination mechanism for adaptive platform trials and cohort studies.

This Erasmus+ project aims to tackle the skills gaps and mismatches related to European-level clinical trial professionals through curriculum development and preparation of e-learning material for the career development of biomedical (medical, pharmacy, clinical research master) students.

The CONSCIOUS II project is an educational project focusing on the field of clinical trials. It aims to develop the skills necessary to conduct high-quality academic clinical trials as well as the skills to effectively disseminate the results obtained.

The CORBEL project aims to establish shared services between the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures Biological and Medical Sciences Research Infrastructures (ESFRI BMS RIs)–which includes ECRIN–for the biomedical research community. CORBEL will achieve this by creating cross-infrastructure scientific workflows. A suite of common services will be developed and dynamically updated in response to specific user and research infrastructure needs. Partnerships with user communities working in European programmes such as Joint Programming Initiatives (JPI) or ERA-NETs (European Research Area Networks) and private-public partnerships such as the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) will be facilitated by single access points and joint services.

Brain research in Europe is a rapidly evolving field, and increasingly at the forefront of science. The complexity of understanding physiological brain functions and brain diseases brings responsibilities to develop novel tools and approaches to advance our understanding of unknown basic brain functions, as well as opportunities to generate novel therapeutic approaches, thus confronting with a major societal challenge in Europe and worldwide.

The ECRAID-Base (European Clinical Research Alliance for Infectious Diseases) project follows the successful ECRAID-Plan project which defined the business model of the ECRAID network. This pan-European network will generate rigorous evidence to improve diagnosis, prevention and treatment of infections and to better respond to emerging infectious disease threats.

The mission of the European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases (ECRAID) Business Plan is to reduce the impact of infectious diseases (IDs) on individual and population health by generating rigorous evidence to improve the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of IDs, and to better respond to ID threats.

ECRAID-PRIME, a European Adaptive Platform Trial (APT) of COVID-19 therapeutics in primary care will build on many years of EU investment in infrastructure for primary care trials and a mature primary care research network that has pioneered novel, efficient, platform clinical trial designs.

The central aim of the project is to enable clinical and quality of care assessment research using data extracted directly from electronic health records (EHR) of emergency departments (ED). 

ECRIN Integrating Activity (ECRIN-IA) is a collaborative project, initially running from 2012 to the end of 2015, funded by the European Commission Framework Program 7 and involving 23 countries (click here for country contacts). Work package (WP) 7 was extended until 2017.

The programme will establish a comprehensive strategy covering funding, research, data, training, tools and clinical aspects to increase the efficiency of results use, diagnosis, drug discovery, patient care and to empowering all stakeholders.

The EOSC Future project is the major implementation project building the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Putting together expertise from major European research infrastructures (computing, network, storage, data, tools) the project is working on operationalising the EOSC. It also builds on previous EC-funded projects that developed core components of this platform. The architecture connects and integrates existing and new technological elements. It brings in relevant data content and tools to investigate and analyse. This is carried out by a large consortium of over 90 European partners, in collaboration with researchers and important European stakeholders.

EOSC-ENTRUST aims to create a European network of Trusted Research Environments (TRE) for sensitive data and to drive European interoperability by joint development of a common blueprint for federated data access and analysis to support the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

EOSC-hub brings together multiple service providers to create the Hub: a single contact point for European researchers and innovators to discover, access, use and reuse a broad spectrum of resources for advanced data-driven research.

EOSC-Life brings together the 13 Biological and Medical ESFRI research infrastructures (BMS RIs) to create an open collaborative space for digital biology. By publishing data and tools in a Europe-wide cloud EOSC-Life aims to bring the capabilities of big science projects to the wider research community.

EOSC4Cancer will make diverse types of cancer data accessible: genomics, imaging, medical, clinical, environmental and socio-economic. It will use and enhance federated and interoperable systems for securely identifying, sharing, processing and reusing FAIR data across borders and offer them via community-driven analysis environments.

The EOSCpilot project will support the first phase in the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as described in the EC Communication on European Cloud Initiatives [2016].

European Paediatric Translational Research Infrastructure (EPTRI) is a project that arises from the need to find answers to the serious lack of medicines for children in EU and worldwide. It aims to propose developmental models for a future research infrastructure focused on paediatric medicines, integrating technology-driven aspects with clinical trials.

This Partnership brings the opportunity to increase European transnational collaborative research funding by creating a funding body for joint programming in priority areas addressing European public health needs. The EU-funded ERA4Health Partnership brings together 32 entities and 27 funding organisations from 21 countries, with the common goal of fostering high-impact translational research for addressing public health needs.

ERDERA aims to have a major impact on rare diseases by supporting patient driven research to develop new treatments and diagnostic pathways and harnessing the potential of health and research data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital technologies. The partnership will be crucial in helping shape the European Research Area on Rare Diseases.

The aim of the ERIC Forum Implementation project is to strengthen the coordination within the ERIC Forum, to have a common voice and enhance collaborations between the partners. The strategic approach of the ERIC Forum will contribute to address critical challenges and develop best practices.

The ERIC Forum 2 project is intended to strengthen and support the implementation of the ERIC Regulation and ERIC services, to structure their cooperation and sustainability across Europe, and to consolidate the integration of the ERICs into the European Research Area by deepening the ERIC Forum’s contribution to research policies. 

The EU-Africa PerMed project aims to integrate organizations from the African continent into ICPerMed activities, as a means to contribute to the implementation of personalised medicine (PM) in the global context, fostering joint PM projects and programmes between Europe and Africa, and strengthening bilateral EU-Africa Union science, technology and innovation in health.

EU-PEARL aims to transform the current approach of conducting single-compound clinical trials into the use of cross-company Integrated Research Platforms (IRPs), taking into consideration both patients’ interests and the opportunities from novel molecules for addressing medical needs. Patient-centric data and knowledge sharing have the potential to accelerate the development of new treatments and reduce the operational costs of clinical trials.

EU-RESPONSE aims to design and run a new adaptive European platform trial on COVID-19 and emerging infectious diseases. EU-RESPONSE will allow the European expansion of the DisCoVeRy study, a phase III, open-label, adaptive, randomized, controlled, multi-centre clinical trial designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of medicinal products in hospitalized adult patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The DisCoVeRy trial was originally initiated in France as WHO Solidarity trial “add-on” study and thanks to EU-RESPONSE it will further expand to many other European countries.

This project aims to: Map existing programmes, capacities and expertise and gaps in LAC countries;  Facilitate the incorporation of CELAC countries in the International Consortium on Personalized Medicine (ICPerMed) and in the ERA-Net ERAPerMed; Foster the participation of CELAC countries in research mobility and transnational projects on PerMed, and create a platform for EU‐CELAC collaboration on PerMed-focused clinical trials Promote cross-border learning from Research & Innovation (R&I) and ELSA for implementing innovations between research capacities based in the EU and CELAC countries. 

EuroGCT is here to help make sense of gene and cell therapy - from science in the lab to treatments for patients. The European Consortium for Communicating Gene and Cell Therapy Information (EuroGCT) brings together 47 partner organisations and institutions across Europe with a goal of providing reliable and accessible information about the use of cells and genetic material to treat disease.

The EuroStemCell project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 funding programme, aims to help European citizens understand stem cells. Over 400 stem cell labs participate in the project, and contributors include scientists, clinicians, ethicists, social scientists and science communicators. To communicate stem cell research, EuroStemCell has created a website and multilingual content such as non-technical fact sheets on key questions and concepts, and a toolkit of films, comics, lesson plans and games to facilitate education and outreach.

The HealthyCloud project aims to define the Strategic Agenda for the European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC). HealthyCloud brings together 21 organisations from across the health sciences including ERICs, national public health institutes, data hubs and academic institutions from 11 countries to ensure inclusion and technical and ethical soundness of the results.

The INTEGRATE-LMedC project aims to develop a new concept to guide and support decision-making for the next-generation research infrastructure (RI) to facilitate efficient utilization and harmonization of large medical cohorts (LMedC), and to accelerate scientific and medical breakthroughs in Europe and beyond.

The overall aim of INVENTS is to provide clinical trial stakeholders, trialists and regulators with a generalisable framework encompassing methods, workflows and evidence-tools to improve the level of evidence in regulatory decision making in rare diseases. This will be achieved through the development and validation of improved extrapolation models, simulation and in silico trials, model based clinical trial design and evidence synthesis methods, all based on robust and mature computational models and qualified on extensive data from representative selected use cases.

ISIDORe will contribute to Europe’s readiness to any epidemic-prone pathogen through a global, integrated and preparedness-driven approach by providing free of charge access to cutting-edge resources and services to scientific user communities for supporting their research projects in the field of infectious diseases in “peaceful times” as well as during outbreaks or epidemics

MiRoR is an innovative and ambitious joint doctoral training programme funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, dedicated to Methods in Research on Research in the field of clinical research. ECRIN is involved in the project as a consortium member.

(PedCRIN) brings together ECRIN and the European Paediatric Clinical Trial Research Infrastructure (EPCTRI) to develop capacity for multinational paediatric clinical trials.

The PERsonalised MedicIne Trials (‘PERMIT’) project on methodological standards for personalised medicine research will establish recommendations ensuring the robustness of personalised medicine trials. 

This project aimed to create a European-wide network of procurers; define a common innovation procurement roadmap in the short and long term, and define the public procurement of innovation procedure(s) that best meet needs and support the early detection and screening of functional low vision conditions, or would support the provision for low vision services.

QUANTUM aims to develop and implement a label mechanism that will attest to the quality and utility of data as well as the maturity level of the providers' data quality procedures, and which could ideally be adopted as part of future HealthData@EU.

The READI project aims to promote a less fragmented and more democratic ecosystem for clinical studies (CS) by engaging key stakeholders in the process of including underserved and underrepresented populations in CS. The consortium is coordinated by the Servicio Madrileño de Salud (SERMAS), through Hospital Universitario La Paz, as the Project Coordinator, Novartis as the Project Lead, and supported by The Synergist as the Digital & Sustainability Coordinator. This project brings together a highly multidisciplinary consortium of 73 organizations from 18 different countries. The six-year project will have a budget of €66.8 million, of which €31.5 million is requested to be funded by IHI, and €34.2 million is committed by industry and contributing partners.

The overall goal of RECOVER is to understand the COVID-19 pandemic through clinical research in order to transform patient care and public health responses. It is composed of multiple observational, epidemiological, and modelling studies.

The project kicks off with the ambition of establishing a European research and innovation eco-system that facilitates fast and cost-effective patient-centric development and access to repurposed medicines.

RI-VIS will increase the visibility of European research infrastructures (RIs) to broader scientific communities, industry and strategic partners in third countries. The RI-VIS consortium has main membership from the life sciences RIs where there is urgent need to improve outreach and strategic partnerships. Partner RIs in other thematic groups ensure that outcomes are relevant to all.

Funding programme: Horizon 2020 (N 730974)

Coordinator: HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO (UHEL)

Budget: €2M

Duration: 36 months (January 2017 to December 2019)

Funding programme: Horizon 2020 (N 654156)

Coordinator: BBMRI-ERIC

Budget: €2M

Duration: 5 years (September 2015 to March 2020)

The aim of SENSITISE is to provide education and training on the importance, conduct and impact of designing clinical trials to ensure appropriate representation of under-served groups. The target audiences are undergraduate biomedical and health professions students, as well as individuals working and researching in the field of clinical trials, including patient and public partners.

The SIMCor project aims to develop an in-silico platform and simulation tools for the development, validation and regulatory approval of cardiovascular devices, providing tangible value to patients and clinicians, device manufacturers, clinical researchers, medical authorities and regulatory bodies. It will focus on two clinically and economically relevant cardiovascular procedures and devices, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and pulmonary artery pressure sensors (PAPS), and will extrapolate best practices for in-silico trials that will be translated into Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all cardiovascular device manufacturing and clinical communities.

The “SYNergies for Cohorts in Health: integrating the Role of all Stakeholders” (SYNCHROS) project aims to establish a sustainable European strategy for the development of the next generation of integrated population, patient and clinical trial cohorts, thereby contributing to an international strategic agenda for enhanced coordination of cohorts globally. 

The TBMED (A testing bed for the development of high-risk medical devices) project will establish an open innovation testing bed specialised in the development of high-risk devices (≥Class IIb).

TESAII was launched in Maputo, Mozambique from 30–31 October 2017. EDCTP is investing almost €3 million in the Mozambique-based consortium, which is coordinated by Dr Eusebio Macete of Manhiça Foundation-Manhiça Health Research Centre (FM-CISM).

With TESA III, 15 institutions from 9 African and 3 European countries come together to strengthen and enhance the capacities for clinical research in Southern Africa built during TESA, and to strengthen the collaboration of North-South and South-South networking activities among its members.

The new project, TRANSVAC-DS (Design study for a European vaccine infrastructure), further builds on the outstanding success and lessons learned of the TRANSVAC1 and TRANSVAC2 projects, also funded by the EC and proposes the establishment of a truly sustainable European vaccine infrastructure. The TRANSVAC-DS consortium comprises twenty-five partners from eleven European countries (DE, FR, NL, NO, BE, PT, ES UK, IT, CH and DK) and includes leading academic and research organisations, other research infrastructures and vaccine alliances working in areas related to vaccine development.

TRANSVAC2 will support innovation for both prophylactic and therapeutic vaccine development based on a disease-overarching and one-health approach, thereby optimising the knowledge and expertise gained during the development of both human and animal vaccines. This will be achieved by bridging the translational gap in biomedical research, and by supporting cooperation between public vaccine R&D institutions of excellence, related initiatives and networks in Europe, and industrial partners.

VACCELERATE will accelerate phase 2 & 3 COVID-19 vaccine trials. VACCELERATE brings together the different stakeholders involved in vaccine development across the continent to develop a platform for trial design and conduct. VACCELERATE will include capacity mapping to identify suitable sites as well as capacity building through the creation of dedicated training. Volunteer registries and access to laboratory sites are also provided within the framework of the project. The project will also ensure the harmonisation of data collection, open data sharing and pooling of data for more robust analysis and data standardisation.

The eXtreme DataCloud (XDC) is a European Union Horizon 2020 funded project aimed at developing scalable technologies for federating storage resources and managing data in highly distributed computing environments. The services provided will be capable of operating at the unprecedented scale required by the most demanding, data intensive, research experiments in Europe and worldwide.