ICPerMed published a set of recommendations for optimizing personalised medicine (PM) related clinical research as a brief specifically addressed to policy, funding bodies and regulatory agencies. These recommendations have been elaborated by the ICPerMed Working Group „Clinical Studies in Personalised Medicine“ together with the Coordination and Support Action PERsonalised Medicine Trials, PERMIT.

ICPerMed published a set of recommendations for optimizing personalised medicine (PM) related clinical research as a brief specifically addressed to policy, funding bodies and regulatory agencies. These recommendations have been elaborated by the ICPerMed Working Group „Clinical Studies in Personalised Medicine“ together with the Coordination and Support Action PERsonalised Medicine Trials, PERMIT.

PM-related clinical research is essential to validate personalised therapeutic diagnostic and screening approaches as well as specific treatments that can safely optimise the individuals’ diagnosis, care and prevention, thus contributing to solve public health challenges. Policy, research funding and regulation play essential roles in the adaptation of research strategies to the specificities of PM. Therefore, the presented set of recommendations specifically aim to guide these stakeholders to support the successful development and implementation of innovative PM approaches.

The document can be downloaded here.

ICPerMed is pleased to pre-announce the 3^rd ICPerMed Training Event on “Research Infrastructures in Personalised Medicine: use, advantages and challenges” which will presumably take place online in June 2023.

The aim of this training is the promotion of the collaboration with European Research Infrastructures in the biomedical areas and to improve the knowledge of the research communities about the potential use of Biological and Medical Research Infrastructures. The benefits utilising this information and support will not only accelerate excellence, innovation and translation of biomedical research, but also raise awareness of barriers and how to overcome them. Lectures of leading experts are planned.

Further information and the registration link will be soon published on the ICPerMed website.

In May 2023, the ICPerMed  Executive Committee (ExCom) met virtually to discuss activities of ICPerMed and related initiatives as well as the strategy and future perspectives for ICPerMed.

Two main events are being prepared for autumn 2023, the next workshop: ”Advancing Personalised Medicine through Technology Development” in Siena on 14-15 November 2023 and the 2^nd ICPerMed Family Meeting on 19 October 2023 (virtual meeting).The two new ICPerMed members -- the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and Genome Canada -- presented their institutions and programmes with regard to personalised medicine. Furthermore, three impressive national activities with a focus on implementation of PM approaches were introduced to the Executive Committee:

• The Law on the right of patients and citizens to Personalised Medicine in Romania
• The Slovene Genome Project
• The Norwegian Strategy for Personalised Medicine 2023-2030

A further important topic was the exchange about the future strategy of ICPerMed in cooperation with the upcoming European Partnership for Personalised Medicine.

The next ICPerMed Executive Committee Meeting will take place on 16 November 2023 in Siena.

Please find below summaries of further ICPerMed activities at a glance:

ICPerMed Recognition

In December 2022 the three winners of the 5^th ICPerMed Recognition were announced. The aim of the ICPerMed Recognition was to honour, encourage, promote and disseminate outstanding examples of PM research using clinical datasets and technology to have an impact on regional, national and international data sharing among patients, health professionals and researchers.

The 6^th edition of the ICPerMed Recognition was launched on 22 February 2023 with a deadline end of April 2023. The submitted proposals are under evaluation and the selected authors will be invited to the ICPerMed workshop in November 2023 to present their results during a plenary session. Find more information about the ICPerMed Recognition here.

Guidelines on Open Access published

Open Science and Open Access are key aspects of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach. It provides online, free, re-usable and shared access to scientific information (peer-reviewed scientific research articles and research data). In order to implement open access policies and data integration of research data into European databases, ICPerMed has compiled guidelines for personalised medicine research projects in a flyer.

Report on ICPerMed Workshop “Personalised Medicine: How to Ensure Value-based Implementation” released

With this workshop in June 2022, ICPerMed intended to exchange and find agreements on the mechanisms and key aspects of value-based cross cutting effects to guide an appropriate implementation of personalised medicine for the benefits of patients and citizens. The detailed workshop report is available here.

New Best Practice Example “Implementation of Personalised Medicine in Estonia“

Successful approaches for personalised medicine are becoming a reality. To show this, ICPerMed features best practice examples. The latest example informs about a 5-year programme for the implementation of personalised medicine in Estonia and its main goal is to create the fundament to employ genetic data more extensively in clinical practice, e.g. for personalised genetic risk-based prevention.
Read more

EP PerMed is planned to be one of the new European Partnerships in the Cluster Health of the European Union’s 9th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe. Since 2021, also ICPerMed and ERA PerMed supported the preparatory phase for EP PerMed with expertise, strategy and events. Finally, in December 2022 the European Commission (EC) call for this partnership was officially published and a consortium of 50 partners submitted the proposal by 13 April 2023 to the EU.

If this proposal will be positively evaluated, a total budget of over 350 Mio. € will committed by EU Member States, European regional authorities, associated countries and the European Union for research funding via seven Joint Transnational Calls (JTCs, 2024-2030) as well as a wide range of other personalised medicine (PM) supporting activities. These investments will be dedicated to accelerate the development of PM in Europe and beyond. The common vision of EP PerMed is to improve health outcomes within sustainable healthcare systems through research, development, innovation and implementation of PM approaches for the benefit of patients, citizens, and society.

In parallel to the EP PerMed proposal, a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for PM has been developed and was recently published on the ICPerMed and ERA PerMed webpages. This document will support stakeholders and experts in all relevant PM research areas and within the PM value continuum to further develop programs, activities, and research towards PM and personalised care, as well as prevention. For EP PerMed, the SRIA will be a crucial inspiration for all activities planned and an update of this document is foreseen within the first three years of the Partnership.

Read more about the SRIA development in a special edition of the ICPerMed newsletter.

The SRIA can be downloaded here.

For any question around the SRIA or EP PerMed, please contact eppermed@dlr.de.

The Final Symposium of the ERA PerMed Joint Transnational Call 2018 (JTC2018) co-funded by the European Commission took place on 28 February and 1 March 2023 in Cluj-Napoca in Romania. The meeting was attended by 67 on-site participants, including researchers from JTC2018 consortia and other stakeholders, such as the ERA PerMed EC Project Officer, representatives from funding organisations, scientific reviewers and patient representatives. In addition, there were around 30 online participants.

The Final Symposium aimed to provide project coordinators of funded projects in the JTC2018 with the opportunity to present and discuss the results of their research studies, in the field of personalised medicine, as well as to promote interactions between the different stakeholders joining the event.

ERA PerMed also supports and encourages young scientists’ careers. During the Final Symposium young researchers from funded projects had the opportunity to disseminate their research studies in a dedicated poster presentation. Awards were given to the best posters as well as to the winner of the video competition “The story behind our personalised medicine research project”, which was conducted before the meeting.

Furthermore, the importance of patients and society involvement in personalised medicine research was stressed through a specific panel discussion on that topic.

This Final Symposium was an enriching opportunity for networking, fostering new ideas and future collaborations and transporting information about the future European Partnership on Personalised Medicine (EP PerMed).

Read more

IC2PerMed: Start of the delegation visits

With China gradually re-opening after the covid-19 pandemic, IC2PerMed has started to organise its delegation visits that were postponed due to the pandemic. The first visit was held from the 17-21 April 2023 between Rome and Milan, in collaboration with Sino-EU PerMed, where the European partners finally had the opportunity to meet their Chinese partners in person.

A memory from the 1^st day of the delegation visit in Rome on the steps of the Faculty of Medicine- Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC).

IC2PerMed is delighted to announce that they will be meeting again on the 26 May for a High-Level Symposium in Geneva, where the Roadmap containing the main project results will be presented and discussed in front of international key opinion leaders.

Furthermore, another event is scheduled to take place in Nice on the 12 and 13 July 2023, the “Exploitation Workshop”. During this workshop, partners will engage in discussions regarding the dissemination of the results collected throughout the years.

The last event will be the delegation visit in China planned for October 2023.

IC2PerMed is excited to renew its relationships with its international partners and continue its mission to promote personalised medicine on a global scale fostering collaboration between Europe and China. Stay tuned for further updates and news on IC2PerMed’s upcoming events.

Sino-EU Permed: Delegation visit to Munich and Milano

In April this year, the Sino-EU PerMed project organised a delegation trip for nine Chinese experts on personalised medicine to visit research facilities and hospitals in Munich and Milano. For example, researchers from the Beijing Institute of Genomics, Fudan University and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica participated at this trip. The delegation's visit was a great success. In Munich, the delegation was welcomed by the Helmholtz Centre for Health and Environment and TranslaTUM. At the BioM Cluster Sino-EU PerMed had the opportunity to organise its Science and Technology (S&T) workshop as a hybrid event. The workshop entitled "Perspectives in Personalised Medicine: Cancer Aspects & Links to Traditional Chinese Medicine" was already the third S&T workshop within the project.

In Milano, the Human Technopole, the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, the San Raffaele Hospital - Centre for Omics Sciences, the Functional Genomics of Cancer Unit, the National Institute of Molecular Genetics and the National Institute of Molecular Genetics opened their doors to our delegation. It was enjoyable to observe the lively exchange between the scientists. The visit also strengthened the relationship between the Sino-EU PerMed project partners and Chinese organisations.  A return visit to China is already planned for autumn this year.

EU-Africa PerMed – 2^nd Stakeholder Workshop and 1^st Summer School!

On 20-21 February 2023, the 2^nd Stakeholder Workshop brought together around 100 participants in Cape Town (SA) to 1) Review the (regional) PM landscape in Africa; 2) Validate gaps and needs identified for developing areas of interest; 3) Validate and refine areas of mutual interest between Africa and Europe; 4) Discuss and reflect on models of collaboration for developing PM in the African regions and 5) between Africa and Europe. 

In satellite, the 1^st EU-Africa PerMed Summer School on “Standards in Personalised Medicine Research” took place on 22-24 February and welcomed 35 participants from 28 African and European countries.

 
More details are available here.

EU-Africa PerMed is starting its second halftime. The consortium analysed in the first two years the landscape around PM in African and created connections to African stakeholders through two Stakeholder Workshops, five Webinars, one Summer School, four African regional meetings and participation in external events.

The major focus of the second half will be the preparation of the “Action Plan to facilitate, foster and promote PM collaboration of Africa and Europe” that will include recommendations/actions to foster, facilitate and encourage joint PM projects and programmes between Africa and Europe. The Action Plan will be presented at the 3rd Stakeholder Workshop in summer 2024.

Stay tuned: 2^nd Summer School in the first half of 2024!

EU-Africa PerMed website: https://www.euafrica-permed.eu/

Twitter EU_AfricaPerMed / LinkedIn @ EU-AFRICA PerMed Project

Join EU-Africa PerMeds public discussions: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14014720/

PROPHET: Kick-off meeting

The project PROPHET (A Personalized prevention roadmap for the future HEalThcare) was launched on September 2022 with the aim of supporting the definition and implementation of innovative, sustainable and high-quality personalised strategies that are effective in preventing chronic diseases. The focus is engaging organisations and individuals to contribute to the construction of a Strategic Research Innovation Agenda (SRIA) to adopt Personalised Prevention approaches into EU health systems. This will be achieved through an initial state-of-the-art mapping phase on personalised prevention, an assessment process and finally a building phase, all three of which will feed into the SRIA.

During the kick-off, there was extensive discussion on the project contents, starting with the definition of personalised prevention, through the analysis of the various operational phases. This is the definition elaborated by the consortium: “Personalised prevention aims to prevent onset, progression and recurrence of diseases through the adoption of targeted interventions that consider the biological information, environmental and behavioural characteristics, socio-economic and cultural context of individuals. This should be timely, effective and equitable in order to maintain the best possible balance in lifetime health trajectory”.

The consortium is made up of 18 partners from 12 different EU Member States plus UK. The next meeting will be in Stockholm in October 2023, one year after the launch of the project, to collect the first results of the intense scientific activity of these months.

You can find the PROPHET website at the following link: https://prophetproject.eu.