The aim is to create an innovative European PhD training network in bone pain. Millions in Europe and beyond suffer from bone pain, a debilitating complication of many musculoskeletal disorders such as arthritis and bone metastasis. However, being a truly multidisciplinary subject spanning neuroscience, bone biology, and even cancer research, it demands a multidisciplinary approach. Despite a huge negative impact on the quality of life of the patients and on society as a whole, no specific treatment is available. To address this societal challenge and the strong innovation potential, we want to form the first European platform to promote frontline research, innovation and education within bone pain. The network encompasses 5 academic and 2 industrial beneficiaries and 1 industrial partner all committed to creating an outstanding wide-ranging yet integrated training program for early stages researchers to elucidate the mechanisms of bone pain and develop new medicines. We will use in vivo models of arthritic pain, cancer-induced bone pain and fracture pain to investigate the pathophysiology and novel treatment strategies. In vivo electrophysiology will be used for studying the physiology and pharmacology of pain transmission and its modulation. Transgenic mouse models will be used to tease out the specific neuronal receptor subtypes involved. Sophisticated behaviour tests will evaluate response to novel treatments. We will create a biobank of human cancer-infiltrated bone to identify specific patterns of neuronal receptor expression and to validate therapeutic targets in humans. In an extensive training effort covering both specific research skills and transferable skills, the students will obtain an interdisciplinary, state-of-the-art and innovative training from the participants, several of which have experience from international networks. The students will benefit from secondments with industrial partners and with some of the foremost pain researchers in Europe

There is a very high need for improving the management of pain. Acute and persistent pain of different origins represent a common medical, social, and economic burden, and its pharmacotherapy is often inadequate. To advance management of pain patients and support decision making in clinical practice, more predictive assessments of treatment success are needed. The development of analgesics is onerous because promising preclinical data often do not translate into the clinic. Improved pharmacodynamic biomarkers could define whether nociceptive signalling is adequately modulated by a new drug, so increasing the chance of successful translation and greatly reducing the risk in initiating clinical development. Further, the pathophysiology of chronic pelvic pain indications is poorly understood and no adequate preclinical models are available, precluding focused preclinical research and leaving affected patients with little hope of relief. IMI-PainCare aims at making advances in these three pain areas in a complementary manner. Three subprojects will address specific scientific challenges. Subproject PROMPT will identify Patient Reported Outcome Measures as tools to standardise assessments of treatment success of acute and chronic pain in Real World conditions and controlled trials, and so improve its management; subproject BioPain will validate the translatability of pharmacodynamic biomarkers and PK-PD modelling in pain pathways of healthy subjects and preclinical species, thereby offering tools to improve drug development; subprojectTRiPP will identify biomarkers and novel therapeutic pathways of clinical phenotypes of patients with chronic pelvic pain, which after back-translation, can improve how preclinical models reflecting human diseases. The goal of IMI-PainCare is to improve the care of patients with acute or chronic pain by providing a toolbox to streamline the development process for novel analgesic drugs and to improve treatment quality in clinical practice.

The Gravitate-Health mission is to equip and empower citizens with digital information tools that make them confident, active, and responsive in their patient journey, specifically encouraging safe use of medicines for better health outcomes and quality of life. It is our vision that engagement of citizens in their own health can only be achieved with access to actionable, understandable, relevant, reliable and evidence-based information that meets their specific needs, health context, and literacy level. This project's ambition is to provide a key piece to advance this vision: the Gravitate Lens (G-lens), which focuses (but does not conceal or filter) approved electronic product information (ePI) content, and offers a route for patients to access trustworthy, up-to-date information that better meet their individual needs. Gravitate-Health is an integrated digital health information project. The principle objective is to demonstrate how use of an integrated, digital, user-centric health information solution with two-way communication could enable tangible improvements in availability and understanding of health information from a set of trusted sources, starting with regulator-approved medicinal product information (e.g. package leaflet content) and EHR-IPS (International Patient Summary). The secondary objectives are to demonstrate that the improved availability and understanding of health information from trusted sources translate to higher levels of adherence to treatment, safer use of medication (Pharmacovigilance), better health outcomes and quality of life, and to develop new and deeper insights into how use of available health information can be optimized to act as effective risk minimization measures. The project allows for efficient and timely development of the G-lens, provides testing grounds for new services and an evaluation framework to test the efficiency, efficacy and safety of Gravitate-Health services. Our main outputs will be an open source digital platform supporting G-lens functionally, demonstrated in a number of testing scenarios, and a White Paper with recommendations on realistic strategies to strengthen access, understanding and future use of digital services like ePIs as a tool for Risk Minimization. The Gravitate-Health is a public – private partnership with 45 members from Europe and the US, co-led by University of Oslo (coordinator) and Pfizer (industry lead), funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) – a joint undertaking of the European Commission, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), IMI Associated Partners.

Optimal treatment of the impaired mobility resulting from ageing and chronic disease is one of the 21st century's greatest challenges facing patients, society, governments, healthcare services, and science. New interventions are a key focus. However, to accelerate their development, we need better ways to detect and measure mobility loss. Digital technology, including body worn sensors, has the potential to revolutionise mobility assessment. The overarching objectives of MOBILISE-D are threefold: to deliver a valid solution (consisting of sensor, algorithms, data analytics, outcomes) for real-world digital mobility assessment; to validate digital outcomes in predicting clinical outcome in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, proximal femoral fracture recovery and congestive heart failure; and, to obtain key regulatory and health stakeholder approval for digital mobility assessment. The objectives address the call directly by linking digital assessment of mobility to clinical endpoints to support regulatory acceptance and clinical practice. MOBILISE-D consists of 35 partners from 13 countries with long, successful collaboration, combining the requisite expertise to address the technical and clinical challenges. To achieve the objectives, partners will jointly develop and implement a digital mobility assessment solution to demonstrate that real-world digital mobility outcomes can successfully predict relevant clinical outcomes and provide a better, safer and quicker way to arrive at the development of innovative medicines. MOBILISE-D's results will directly facilitate drug development, and establish the roadmap for clinical implementation of new, complementary tools to identify, stratify and monitor disability, so enabling widespread, cost-effective access to optimal clinical mobility management through personalised healthcare.

By bridging an important gap between basic research and drug development, ESCulab will facilitate the translation of fundamental scientific insights into innovative drug starting points. New biological ideas will be collected by crowdsourcing, novel targets, phenotypes and pathways translated and de-risked by delivering high-quality chemical starting points for drug development. Innovators from EU academics and SMEs are offered access to state-of-the-art industry-grade facilities, drug discovery expertise, and a top-quality, curated library with over 550,000 unique compounds suitable for screening potential drug targets. The ESCulab drug discovery data generated will allow the innovators to build a proposition that is likely to attract investors and/or drug developers and stimulate them to further exploit these findings. Ultimately, this will result in novel medicines – based on basic scientific findings – that will help patients (sooner). ESCulab will achieve this by starting off the shoulders of the European Lead Factory (ELF), where this principle has been successfully implemented. 15 out of the 18 ESCulab consortium members were involved in ELF, thus ensuring maximum benefit from the ELF legacy. ESCulab will expand and enhance ELF by supporting 185 new screens. Important additions include the application of a much larger compound collection for screening, the ability to accommodate the more complex phenotypic screening assays, and the building of a sustainable business model to ensure access to Collaborative Drug Discovery activities beyond the funding period. The delivery of qualified hit lists (QHLs) is the end point for this project, but during the funding period, ESCulab will attract additonal funding for externally paid screens and hit-to-lead projects for organizations such as charities and foundations for long term sustainability of the initiative.