The 'Fostering Oncology Research by Charities in Europe' consortium (FORCE) is a network of 15 European charities across 12 European countries joining forces to support pragmatic clinical trials tackling high and unmet medical needs in oncology in Europe. The main objective of the FORCE CSA is to provide the Mission Board with an ambitious, yet feasible, programme by & for cancer charities, to optimize their contribution to the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. The Pragmatic Clinical Trial Programme will be elaborated in a bottom-up coordinated approach, involving all relevant stakeholders (researchers and professionals from different disciplines, patients, citizens, policy makers and regulatory authorities) across Member States and Associated Countries. During the CSA, the FORCE consortium will propose foundational pillars for EU strategic support to a European cancer charities network dedicated to organising, implementing and monitoring sustainable and ambitious support for cancer pragmatic clinical trials. The overall objectives of this initiative are to: 1. Define and deliver a Pragmatic Clinical Trial Programme by cancer charities; 2. Implement two transnational calls to test and improve our proposed programme (feasibility step); 3. Deliver to the EC a blueprint on pragmatic oncology clinical trials by charities to facilitate decision-making and provide guidelines for the future work programme. Through the successful achievement of these objectives, the FORCE network will both strengthen cooperation among European cancer charities and mobilise the European research community through crucial scientific questions to improve health outcomes for cancer patients through patient-focused research. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on "Diagnostics and treatment".

CGI-Clinics aims at improving personalised medicine in oncology by optimizing genomic data interpretation (after sequencing and before advising on compatible targeted therapies). Interpretation is a bottleneck for the full deployment and broad accessibility of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) in cancer management. The project tackles the 3 main hurdles in the interpretation of cancer mutations: it is not systematic, it deals with a majority of variants of unknown significance and it fails to empower patients. The interpretation of tumor genomic data relies on the work of experts reviewing scattered databases and resources, in a time-consuming process that may lead to suboptimal clinical decisions. CGI-clinics will systematize the interpretation process by integrating relevant public and private databases hospitals in a one-stop shop tool, with the possibility to organize virtual molecular tumor boards co-facilitated by reference hospitals. Project will have three phases: a setup (assess needs), validation (pilot with the 9 clinical partners) and replication (30 hospitals across EU). It will enable democratization of genomic data interpretation (independent of their size, resources and profiling technology) and provide health economics validation. Relying on a systematic automatic learning platform, GCI-Clinics will increase the share of interpretable variants in tumors (from the current 9-12% to at least 50%), and features that constitute biomarkers of drug response. The interpretation process is complex for most cancer patients, alienating them from knowledge of their illness. CGI-Clinics will build eduCGI, an app to help them understand the information gained through interpretation of their tumors, facilitating informed discussions with clinicians and sharing their data for research. Ultimately, the project is built to inform policy-makers on cancer management and empower patients.

The Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association against Cancer (from now on, FCAECC) is a philanthropic private entity that aims to finance excellent cancer research in Spain for the benefit of the general public and patients. Ranging from basic research to clinical application, FCAECC is the entity that devotes the most funds to promote and support cancer research in Spain. In its Strategic Plan, FCAECC states its firm commitment to finance the best cancer research in Spain, aiming at promoting talent, stabilizing the professional career of researchers, fostering the globalization of Spanish cancer research and involving society. FCAECC has a national fellowship programme that supports experienced researchers to develop their own research lines and currently is funding 525 cancer research projects worth 92 million EUR, which resulted in 316 publications in 2021, with an average impact factor of 8. With AECC Talent new fellowship programme, FCAECC opens its fellowship programme for trans-national mobility, aiming to attract to Spain the most talented experienced researchers from abroad. AECC Talent will contribute to improve prevention, early diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of cancer patients, which are key intervention areas of the Horizon Europe Mission on Cancer. AECC Talent will fund 30 fellowships divided into two calls. Host organisations participating in the programme are accredited by FCAECC as excellent in cancer research by means of a rigorous assessment process that guarantees their quality, impact and leadership in cancer research at national and international level. Fellows will have a wide choice of entities and multidisciplinary teams in which to carry out the project of their interest, following a bottom-up approach. The 15 host organisations report a high number of international collaborations and participation in European and international projects and endorse the principles of the Charter & Code for Researchers.

Cancer is a worldwide health burden and a major public health challenge. Despite significant advances in the understanding, prevention, diagnostics and treatment, cancer remains a public health problem in Europe and the world. In such a setting, translational cancer research plays a key role in successfully addressing the growing burden of cancer. The great potential of translational cancer research in Europe will only be achieved when the main barriers are systematically addressed through concerted actions between public and private organisations that provide funds for research, researchers, healthcare providers and all those engaged in the cancer research spectrum. Moreover, adequate and systematic financial support backed by a strong political commitment is absolutely essential to help reduce the burden of cancer that European citizens are currently facing. In this context, the TRANSCAN-3 network, with a strong background in funding cancer research, embodies an excellent model of cross-national cooperation by bringing together 31 funding organisations, from 20 countries, with the common goal of supporting high-impact translational cancer research through cross-national joint calls for proposals, and by an efficient investment of dedicated national/regional public funding, leveraged with foundation/charity-based resources and EU financial support. Building up on the well-established cooperation and accomplishments, through the harmonisation of national/regional funding mechanisms and programmes, plus continued and sustained series of efforts for the access to and sharing of data on cancer research, this TRANSCAN-3 project also aims at becoming a catalysts for a sustainable model of funding of high-impact cancer research in Europe and beyond, with an approach to effectively engage relevant stakeholders (patients, society as a whole, policy makers, etc.) in different stages of the action.

Cancer is a worldwide health burden and represents a major public health challenge in Europe. It is responsible for 25% of all deaths, being the second most common cause of death after cardio-vascular diseases and the main cause of mortality among people aged 45–64. Today, an estimated 9 million individuals in Europe live with cancer (Globocan 2008, http://globocan.iarc.fr/). Cancer became a chronic disease which contributed substantially to the growth of medical expenditures and constitutes a major socio-economic challenge for Europe as well as globally. A rapid and effective bidirectional transfer of relevant cancer research findings between bench and bedside would play a pivotal role in addressing top-priority needs at the EU level to reduce incidence and mortality of malignancies and to improve the quality of life of cancer patients. The proposed ERA-NET Cofund TRANSCAN-2, in continuity with the preceding and ongoing TRANSCAN ERA-NET, aims at linking translational cancer research funding programmes in 15 Member States, 3 Associated Countries, and a third country. By concentrating transnational resources, TRANSCAN-2 will provide a critical financial and scientific mass for tackling large-scale problems, relevant for improving translational cancer research globally. A co-funded joint transnational call (JTC) will be launched focusing on the topic “Intratumour heterogeneity in resistance to therapy and recurrence” followed by three additional JTCs that will be implemented in a frame of multinational translational cancer research programmes. In addition, strategies will be developed for the enlargement of the network, for improvement of coordination and for an efficient communication and dissemination of the results of the consortium as well as of the research projects funded through the JTCs. The monitoring of the projects funded through the JTCs and the critical assessment of the performance of TRANSCAN-2, based on key indicators, will be also realised.