New opportunities with EP PerMed

The newly launched European Partnership for Personalised Medicine (EP PerMed) combines European Commission (EC), national and regional funding with the aim of improving future healthcare for all citizens through personalised therapy, diagnosis and prevention.

02 January 2024: Publication of the call

The European Partnership for Personalised Medicine (EP PerMed), supported by the European Union under Horizon Europe, has launched its first joint transnational call (JTC2024) for proposals on “Identification or Validation of Targets for Personalised Medicine Approaches (PMTargets)”. In total, 39 funding organisations participate in this call with an available budget of over 45 Mio€.

EP PerMed is organising an information day on 15 January 2024 to present the first Joint Transnational Call (JTC2024) on “Identification or Validation of Targets for Personalised Medicine Approaches (PMTargets)”and invites potential applicants that are interested to submit a research proposal to participate.

Call information, and relevant documents can be found here.

What is personalised medicine?

Personalised medicine (PM) uses an individual’s genetics to determine their predisposition to certain diseases, delivers timely and targeted prevention, diagnosis, and tailors a precise therapeutic strategy at the right time and that also reduces side effects.

What is EP PerMed?

EP PerMed brings together ministries, funding organisations and research institutes from 24 countries and 10 European regions and puts into action The Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda for Personalised Medicine (SIRA for PM 2023), which aims to ensure that the long-term vision of PM is translated into roadmaps with funding and supporting activities, objectives and measurable outcomes and forms the basis for the partnership’s structure.

It builds on the results and experience of several international, EU-funded personalised medicine initiatives and projects, as well as more than 15 years of successful collaboration among many of the partners involved.

In addition to its funding function, EP PerMed will:

• Act as global personalised medicine platform for strategic dialogue, alignment and networking
• Facilitate and accelerate all steps of implementation through the full value continuum, so that personalised medicine achievements can be successfully implemented
• Foster demonstration projects and promote successes and lessons learned to demonstrate evidence of personalised medicine implementation

What is EIT Health’s role?

EIT Health, brings its extensive knowledge in innovation and acceleration to EP PerMed to promote the transition of the results from research to innovation and implementation.

EIT Health is not acting as a granting body, but rather, is providing services for the acceleration of personalised medicine development, innovation, and its implementation in public healthcare.

Services include: co-design and co-management of innovation calls, hackathons, matchmaking events, round tables, education landscape analysis, education and training programmes, fast-track accelerator calls, venture-builder cycles, twinning calls, and engagement of patients, citizens and professional associations.

This partnership opens new opportunities for EIT Health Partners and the community, and will create synergies with EIT Health’s Flagship programmes.

What value does this give EIT Health Partners?

Through EIT Health’s partnership with EP PerMed, Partners will gain access to:

• The top level European network of personalised medicine, e.g., via matchmaking events
• Extra funding opportunities via participation in several open calls
• Knowledge; through the EP PerMed program, several mappings and surveys will be conducted and the reports and analyses will be shared with members of the partnership. There will also be educational calls to elevate skills and expertise

Additionally, Partners will be able to:

• Influence EC policy on personalised medicine through round table events and high-level reports
• Increase their visibility by showcasing successful projects at events and sharing information to the network via project media channels

Will EIT Health be responsible for any Calls

Yes! EIT Health will be responsible for the Education and Fast-Track Calls.

The main Innovation Calls and JTCs will be run by other EP PerMed partners. This first JTC, JTC2024, for example, is being led by the French National Research Agency, Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR).

What is JTC2024?

The overall objectives of the JTC2024 are to:

• Support research projects aiming at identifying or validating targets for personalised medicine approaches in combination with development of companion biomarkers or other markers to allow for monitoring of treatment outcomes and patient stratification
• Encourage and enable interdisciplinary collaborations by combining pre-clinical and clinical research in translational projects, and multi-actor research by engaging a range of other relevant disciplines such as bioinformatics/health informatics/data research, ELSI research, implementation research or health economics research connected to the proposed research topic, including end-user perspective analysis to empower the implementation of PM
• Encourage cross-sectorial collaborations, by including academia, health care providers, the private sector (e.g., SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises), industry, as well as regulatory/HTA agencies and patient organisations

Consortiums are expected to be collaborative, interdisciplinary, transnational and trans-sectional, and research projects in all disease areas are encouraged.

This Call has an available budget of €40 million, and all stakeholders are invited to take part in the calls. A partnering tool developed and supported by the EP PerMed will also be available in 2024

There will be an open information day introducing JTC2024 to prospective applicants coming shortly.

Further Details

All Calls will be announced on the EP PerMed website: https://www.eppermed.eu/

Calls will also appear on the websites of the national funding agencies providing funding sources to that particular Call. A list of these agencies can be found on the EP PerMed website here.

Additionally, the Call information will be available on the ECAS Portal, and on the EIT Health website. To receive all updates on EP PerMed and planned Calls, subscribe to the newsletter here.

You can also follow EP PerMed on social media

• LinkedIn
• Twitter (X)

Any questions?

If you have any questions about EP PerMed, please contact:

• EP PerMed Co-Ordination Unit: eppermed@dlr.dr 
• EP PerMed Program Manager at EIT Health: Merike Leego (merike.leego@eithealth.eu)