• Disclaimer for COVID-19
• ICPerMed conference ‘Personalised Medicine – From Vision to Practice' in Paris – new dates
• Madrid Workshop 2019: Presentations, video recordings and Workshop Report published
• ICPerMed vice chair re-elected
• Virtual ICPerMed Executive Committee Meeting on 6 May 2020
• Publication of two peer-reviewed articles related to the ICPerMed Vision Paper
• Update on ERA PerMed
• News from the ICPerMed-related CSAs
  • EULAC-PerMed: Summary of 2019 and upcoming events
  • IC2PerMed: Kick-off meeting in February 2020
  • Sino-EU PerMed: Fostering the cooperation between Europe and China in Personalised Medicine
  • SAPHIRe: News from Securing the Adoption of Personalised Health in Regions
  • PERMIT: Kick-off meeting in January 2020

Due to the COVID-19 situation, ICPerMed and the European Commission have been continuously in contact since the emergency started. Please be informed that the information in this newsletter is susceptible for variation in the next months; all updates will be provided in the news section on the ICPerMed website.

Due to the COVID-19 situation, ICPerMed and the European Commission have taken the difficult decision to postpone the second ICPerMed conference 'Personalised Medicine – From Vision to Practice', initially planned on 15-16 October 2020. The event will now take place on 25-26 February 2021 in Paris (France) at La Maison de la Chimie. The conference will demonstrate how personalised medicine will lead to the next generation of healthcare by 2030.

The aim of the conference is to provide solutions and to demonstrate strategies on how to implement successfully personalised medicine approaches and on how knowledge and research results could be efficiently and equitably transferred to patients and citizens benefits.

Based on the ICPerMed Vision Paper, the conference will be committed to demonstrate during five dedicated sessions the importance and the need to address personalised medicine challenges in

1. individual and public engagement,
2. the involvement of health professionals,
3. the implementation within healthcare systems,
4. health-related data and
5. the development of sustainable economic models allowing improved diagnostic, therapy and preventive approaches in new healthcare concepts

for the benefit of all citizens. To this end, these topics will be tackled through the prism of four identified critical pillars representing transversal issues that are crucial for the successful implementation of PM focusing on data and technology, intersectoral synergies, healthcare systems reforms, and education and literacy.

If you are interested in participating, please register here.

Here you can find further information on the programme, the venue and the Scientific Committee.

On 5-6 November 2019, the second ICPerMed Workshop 'Personalised Medicine for All Citizens and Patients within Sustainable Implementation' assembled around 150 experts from 31 countries in Madrid, Spain.

The presentations and video recordings of the lectures as well as the Workshop Report are now available on the ICPerMed website.

ICPerMed is glad to announce that Dr. Astrid Vicente from the Instituto Nacional de Saude Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) in Portugal has been re-elected as vice chair of the Executive Committee.

ICPerMed thanks her for her valuable and enthusiastic support so far and is looking forward to the coming months.

On 6 May 2020, the ICPerMed Executive Committee met virtually to discuss and plan strategy and future activities of the consortium.

At the meeting, the Executive Committee decided that ICPerMed representatives will participate in a group that will give input for preparing a European Partnership on Personalised Medicine. This partnership is foreseen to be implemented under Horizon Europe, the next EU research and innovation framework programme.

Additionally the Executive Committee furthered the cooperation with the ICPerMed-related coordination and support actions (CSAs) by appointing ICPerMed contact persons for the recently started CSAs PERMIT, SINO-EU PerMed and IC2PerMed. More information on the CSAs is provided below.

ICPerMed was involved in writing two peer-reviewed articles related to the ICPerMed Vision Paper, which was published as a white paper on the ICPerMed website in September 2019.

In April 2020, the ICPerMed chairs Astrid Vicente, Wolfgang Ballensiefen and Jan-Ingvar Jönsson have published a commentary on the ICPerMed Vision Paper in the Journal of Translational Medicine. The article focuses on how personalised medicine will transform healthcare by 2030.

Further, a peer-reviewed article was published in the Future Medicine Journal 'Personalized Medicine' in March 2020. The article is co-authored by the ICPerMed Secretariat and describes the methodology, results and conclusions of a web-based survey with experts on personalised medicine. This survey was conducted by ICPerMed in 2018 to collect input to the discussion around the ICPerMed Vision Paper, defining the vision and its perspectives as outlined in the ICPerMed Vision Paper.

The ERA PerMed third Joint Transnational Call (JTC) for research projects in personalised medicine was launched on 16 December 2019. The call for proposals is supported by 31 funding organisations from 23 countries and 6 regions, and is the second of three additional calls that are non-cofunded by the European Commission. The available budget for this call is approximately 27 million euros.

With its third transnational call, ERA PerMed, which is closely linked to ICPerMed, aims to promote innovative interdisciplinary collaboration towards the implementation of personalised medicine. The topic of the call is 'Multidisciplinary Research Projects on Personalised Medicine – Pre-/Clinical research, Big Data and ICT, Implementation and User’s Perspective'.

The call received 188 eligible pre-proposals. Following a first evaluation, 52 pre-proposals have been invited to the full-proposal stage. The submission deadline for those pre-proposals that were invited to submit a full-proposal is 15 June 2020. The Joint Call Secretariat for the JTC 2020 is the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) Project Management Agency.

Next year, a JTC 2021 will be launched, with the Italian Ministry of Health, (IT-MoH), as Joint Call Secretariat. For further information about ERA PerMed calls, please refer to the ERA PerMed website.

EULAC-PerMed: Summary of 2019 and upcoming events

The first year of EULAC-PerMed concluded successfully in December 2019 with the “Big Week of Personalised Medicine” that took place in Montevideo, Uruguay. A EULAC PerMed delegation had the honour to be received by the President of the Republic of Uruguay who thanked the consortium for this great event and expressed the country's interest in following these initiatives closely.

The events included a Summer School “Health Technology Assessment Research & PerMed”, a Stakeholder Workshop “Building bridges on personalised medicine (PM) between Latin American and Caribbean countries (LAC) and Europe” and a Technical Workshop “Innovative methodologies for data use and management in PM research” that gathered more than 200 attendants from Ministries of Health, Ministries of Science and Technology, R&I funding organisations, research centres and private companies coming from more than 20 countries (LAC, EU and USA). The recent joining of Panama in the ERA PerMed Joint Translational Call 2020 can be considered an example for the great interest PM raises in LAC countries. Further, stakeholders, scientists and health professionals had the opportunity to exchange their experiences in order to build ways of collaboration in PM.

In the last term of 2020, two new interesting events are scheduled: a third Summer School and a second Technical Workshop both on Ethical, Legal and Social aspects of PM. We hope the present pandemic situation due to the COVID-19 will be controlled worldwide by then, allowing the events take place.

More information on the past and upcoming events can be found on the EULAC PerMed website.

IC2PerMed: Kick-off meeting in February 2020

From 17-19 February 2020, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC) kicked off the “Integrating China in the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine” (IC2PerMed) project in Rome, Italy, with the participation of seven European and three Chinese partners (remotely due to the SARS-CoV-2 epidemics in China).

IC2PerMed is a four-year project funded under the Horizon 2020 scheme as a Coordination and Supporting Action (CSA). It is coordinated by Prof. Walter Ricciardi from UCSC, current President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations and Italian Representative at the WHO. The IC2PerMed project aims at providing key solutions for enabling the convergence under ICPerMed of European and Chinese stakeholders, with an orientation towards a Public Health perspective. The project has already started working on the mapping exercise of policies, programmes, standards and initiatives in personalised medicine in Europe and in China. Dissemination and communication actions are ongoing, while a selection of experts for dedicated working groups centred on the ICPerMed Action Plan priorities will start soon. A contribution in this COVID-19 pandemic time was also given by means of a webinar, organised by the European Network of Research and Innovation of Centres and Hubs (ENRICH) in China, with an insight about the genetic testing technology. Follow us on Twitter (@Ic2PerMed)!

Sino-EU PerMed: Fostering the cooperation between Europe and China in Personalised Medicine

The Sino-EU PerMed project started in January 2020. The project received a two million euros grant from the European Framework Programme Horizon 2020. It aims to foster the cooperation between Europe and China in Personalised Medicine in the next four years.

The project is composed of six excellent research and research management entities in Europe and China, namely the German Aerospace Center - Project Management Agency (coordinator), Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences, Innovation Fund Denmark, Health Research Board Ireland, Jiangsu International Technology Transfer Center and Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health.

The European partners are actively involved in ICPerMed as well as related initiatives and activities. Therefore, one of the objectives of this project is to foster collaboration between Chinese health organisations and ICPerMed, and to identify areas of mutual interest.

Find further information on the project webpage: www.sino-eu-permed.eu

SAPHIRe: News from Securing the Adoption of Personalised Health in Regions

Online hackathon resource: With the global outbreak of COVID-19 and the race to stop the spread of the disease, communities of tech professionals, data scientists, healthcare professionals, designers, researchers and entrepreneurs are coming together online to collaborate, innovate and quickly find solutions through hackathons. There are many hackathons taking place across Europe. SAPHIRe has collated a list of current and upcoming hackathons on their website, which they will keep updated.

Research and Innovation related to COVID-19 – an online resource: Regions have spearheaded numerous research and innovation initiatives to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. As a central resource, SAPHIRe have started to collate these regional initiatives on their website. SAPHIRe would be interested in hearing from any regions who would like to have their COVID-19 related R&I documents added to the SAPHIRe resource. Please get in touch here.

Online Observatory: In December 2019, SAPHIRe launched its Observatory, an online database that provides an overview of regional activities in personalised medicine, as well as links to policy documents and major initiatives. Having all this information collated and available in one place, the Observatory will be extremely useful for regional policymakers, funders and other key stakeholders to share relevant information on their policies, projects and innovation activities related to personalised medicine. SAPHIRe encourages anyone interested in their region being represented in the Observatory to complete this survey or to contact them for more information.

PERMIT: Kick-off meeting in January 2020

The official kick-off meeting of the PERMIT project took place on 24 January 2020 in Paris, France. All consortium participants and partners attended and actively participated in discussions on all seven project work packages. Presentations were made by work package leads on their respective areas of work in the field of personalised medicine trials.

Since the kick-off meeting, PERMIT has been actively working on its scoping review that will map personalised medicine (PM) research methodologies along the PM research pipeline and identify gaps where recommendations on standards will be essential. An operational definition of PM research was defined for all work within PERMIT as well as the scope of each stage of PM research programmes. The protocol of the PERMIT scoping review is publicly available on Zenodo.

The PERMIT project website is regularly being updated with all news, events and future publications of the project.