The SCARLET (SCAling up early and late effects Research in Lithuanian childhood cancer survivors through Education and Twinning) proposal aims to increase scientific excellence and innovation capacity at Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Klinikos (VULSK) and its affiliated entity National Cancer Institute (NCI) by scaling up research activities in Lithuanian childhood cancer survivors (CCS). The area for twinning was defined based on the emerging importance of survivorship research due to the increasing number of CCS in Europe and identified gaps in Lithuania. The key challenges addressed in the proposal are 1) lack of data on the prevalence of CCS in Lithuania exploitable in research initiatives; 2) poor transition from paediatric to adult care depriving young CCS over the age of 18 of advantages of surveillance in a research context; 3) the need to implement innovative solutions for monitoring and prevention of early and late effects through joint research activities; 4) suboptimal competences in management and administration of large-scale research projects. Four research-intensive institutions from 4 European countries will bring to the consortium their specific expertise to address identified shortcomings. The proposal aims to build on and exploit current shared research initiatives that will be leveraged to achieve SCARLET’s goal and objectives. The twinning exercise will be implemented through secondments of Lithuanian staff to the partner premises and engagement in the research activities led by partner institutions, organisation of educational events, and participation in knowledge-of-transfer meetings. As a result of the twinning activities, VULSK and NCI will improve their research profile and reputation, international visibility, and attractiveness. The expanded networking channels will facilitate Lithuanian professionals to join international research groups focused on survivorship research ultimately improving the quality of survival in Lithuania.

The REVAMP project will develop, test and implement an innovative and sustainable transnational freely accessible online training package to enhance medical and healthcare practitioners knowledge and skills, to recognise and understand the health needs and impact of violence, abuse and neglect on victims, thereby improving their health outcomes. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse (IPVA) as a pandemic, with a 1:3 global prevalence rate in most countries (WHO, 2013). IPVA includes physical, sexual, emotional abuse and controlling behaviours by an intimate partner (WHO, 2012). The WHO (2017) estimates that globally almost 1/4 of adults suffered physical abuse and/or neglect as a child and about 1/3 of women experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or nonpartner sexual violence at some point in their life. Tackling and ending gender-based violence is recognised by the European Commission, and further supported by combating gender-based violence and protecting and supporting victims (European Union, 2017). The Council of Europe indicates that about 1 in 5 children has suffered this type of abuse and that, in 70-85% of cases, the perpetrator was known to the victim. ‘Violence against women and domestic violence continue to be one of the most pervasive human rights violations, both in Europe and beyond’ (Council of Europe, 2014, page 1). The need for effective transnational education of medical practitioners to recognise victims of IPVA is clear due to the plethora of evidence that IPVA is a common problem that has a significant negative impact on individuals and families. Medical and healthcare practitioners will see victims of IPVA on a daily basis given the high number of victims. There has been little attention to producing a robust and freely accessible training. This project will be carried out transnationally as IPVA is prevalent across all countries, and migration might result in a victim trying to access support in several countries. The REVAMP project represents an original approach of joining forces across Europe to deliver this training to all medical and healthcare providers. REVAMP's target group are medical and healthcare practitioners as defined by Eurostat Statistics Explained (2017), where 'practitioner' means a person who delivers healthcare to a person such as: medical doctor, nurse, midwife, dentist, pharmacy, physiotherapist, social worker etc. REVAMP partners are embedded in the delivery of training medical and healthcare professionals, ideally placed to co develop and disseminate the training. REVAMP has the following objectives: 1-To develop a freely available and easily accessed online training package consisting of five modules for medical and healthcare practitioners to enhance their recognition of an understanding of IPVA, thereby improving the health outcome of victims.2- To use innovative teaching methods3- To involve a multi-lateral partnership of institutions4- To contribute to the public health strategy for recognition of victims of IPVA5-To ensure a broad dissemination of findings to relevant stakeholders6-To recognise the new acquisition of skills and knowledge by 5 ECTS for successful participationThe methodology that will apply to the REVAMP project is designed to support the development of an effective and transnationally relevant training programme for medical and healthcare practitioners to enhance the recognition of and understanding of the impact of violence on victims and are able to then refer these victims for ongoing support. REVAMP will be freely accessible from an outward facing website. Using a variety of pedagogical methods to engage medical and healthcare practitioners in the training programme, each of the five modules of the REVAMP training package will present a different aspect of IPVA. REVAMP will be developed into five modules (OCAPA): Orientation to the training package, IPVA and the child, IPVA and the adult, IPVA and the older person, Analysis and Evaluation. The effective open access REVAMP Platform from which the training is accessed is a significant step towards transnational recognition and training of IPVA giving wider exposure and access to medical and healthcare practitioners across Europe. Medical and health care practitioners across Europe will have the opportunity to engage in free and consistent training to support an effective response to victims of IPVA. Training participants will have improved skills competencies resulting in positive impact on the health and wellbeing of the victim. There is currently no standard training focussing on the training of medical and health care practitioners transnationally and REVAMP fills this gap. After completion, this project may be used to develop further trans European training.

Vilnius University Hospital Santaros Klinikos (VULSK) acts as a coordinator of the TREL (Twinning in Research and Education to improve survival in Childhood Solid Tumours in Lithuania) project that aims to enhance translational, clinical and late-effect research in paediatric solid tumours (ST). The project concept is based on the existing shortcomings in paediatric oncology at VULSK and Lithuania – scarce research indicators and inferior survival rates in children with ST. TREL has a goal to increase scientific excellence in the most common paediatric ST (brain tumours, neuroblastoma and renal tumours). VULSK and 8 leading research intensive institutions each covering different areas of the project activities according to their expertise form the TREL consortium. TREL will be delivered in 7 working packages addressing training in tumour specific laboratory research and clinical trials, cross-cutting education on genome-wide sequencing and treatment innovations, enhancing skills in observational studies on the quality of survivorship including fertility preservation and research methodology as well as project and innovation management. Training exercise will focus on the implementation of secondments of VULSK staff to the partner premises, organisation of multidisciplinary transfer-of-knowledge meetings, and participation in strategic scientific meetings corresponging objectives of each working package. As a consequence of the twinning activities with internationally-leading research active counterparts VULSK will improve its research profile and reputation, enhance international, regional and national visibility and competitiveness. Fostering of existing and establishment of new networking channels will facilitate incorporation of VULSK professionals to the ongoing collaborative projects that will improve research indicators of individual researchers and VULSK as well as will increase survival rate of children with ST in Lithuania in a long-term perspective.

Project SANGUINE addresses the objectives raised by the Cancer Mission Call, which emerged from the growing societal challenge faced by European citizens. According to the European Cancer Information System (ECIS), each year, 2.7 million people in the EU are diagnosed with cancer. The SANGUINE project focuses on hematological malignancies, which account for 10% of those cases, and aims to target the four objectives of the Cancer Mission: (1) understanding, (2) prevention, including screening and early detection, (3) diagnosis, and (4) quality of life improvement of the patients and their relatives. The project introduces a novel minimally-invasive blood test that detects and classifies a set of hematological malignancies. The test is based on detecting a combination of epigenetic biomarkers in DNA from peripheral blood cells and in cell-free DNA. The SANGUINE test will provide superior sensitivity at low-cost which is ideal for screening purposes. This is enabled by direct fluorescent labeling of epigenetic marks in patient DNA and its analysis on a custom designed microarray – the HemaChip. SANGUINE team consists of a comprehensive and strong team of expert that will address medical, technological and social aspects of the developed diagnostic test. Expertise from the medical field includes clinical research, technology development and access to patients. This will enable optimization of the test for hematological malignancies following a user-centric approach and experiencing its implementation in “real-life” clinical settings. The social part of the team includes researchers and patient organization that will promote accessibility of the test to patients and individuals at-risk for screening, early detection and disease management, in combination with a study aiming to increase the screening rates. Ultimately, our project will provide validated reagents, HemaChips and data analysis software ready for large scale screening and early stage commercialization.