iCARE-2 is an ambitious programme offering 30 three-year international fellowships to foster excellence in cancer research, based on the mobility of postdoctoral researchers. iCARE-2 proposal is presented by AIRC, the Italian Association for Cancer Research, as beneficiary. AIRC, a private non-profit association, was created in 1965 by visionary Italian scientists returning to Italy after a successful work experience abroad, with the mission to find a cure for cancer through research. Nowadays AIRC is the Italian leading charity providing about 40% of all funds invested in cancer research in Italy and supporting hundreds of research projects and fellowships in any cancer-related fields. Grants and fellowships are awarded with a merit-based selection process. To train excellent and innovative cancer researchers iCARE-2 programme will: 1. let fellows choose the cancer-related topic of their research and the best supervisor and Hosting Institution, worldwide; 2. offer and promote training in transferable skills, with a special focus on research integrity, science communication, grantsmanship, project management and intellectual property rights; 3. support international networking, not only with the mobility inherent to the program but also through interactions with other fellows and with AIRC. Optimal employment and working conditions will be guaranteed to all iCARE-2 fellows to foster their personal and financial stability and to ensure excellence of their research activities.

Our societies and economies rely heavily on highly educated and competent people. Skills such as creativity, critical thinking, taking initiative and problem solving play an important role in coping with complexity and change in today's society. Too often, science is seen as something separate from all other subjects or disciplines in education, disconnected from people’s lives beyond school. While science influences all parts of our lives and our decision-making processes. Along with language and artistic literacy, knowledge of science and mathematics is the basis for personal accomplishment and responsible citizenship, social and economic development, and a benchmark of innovation, entrepreneurship and competitiveness in our global world.STARS GAME is a 3-year project aimed at developing innovative game-based and inquiry-based practice to bring research into schools through the collaboration of international institutions. Activities will involve 10-13 years old students and their teachers in 4 countries, as their science curricula are focused on a deeper knowledge of the three sciences – biology, chemistry and physics – and of the scientific method. The key competences developed by students will raise their awareness of the different aspects encompassing science in today’s society, nurture their curiosity and cognitive resources in this field and develop positive attitudes to scientific research. Students will be aware both of careers in science, as an important cultural and humanitarian activity, and of careers from science, regarding the extensive range of potential careers that the study of science affords. Moreover, STARS GAME project will improve in students evidence-based reasoning for decision making and competencies for problem-solving and innovation, as well as analytical and critical thinking.The overall objectives: 1.to develop innovative game-based and inquiry-based practice to bring research into schools;2.to foster international collaboration and networking development of the involved organizations on a EU scale; 3.to contribute to raise students’ curiosity and trust towards scientific research, to increase students’ critical thinking and to develop multidisciplinary vision of scientific research characterized by uncertainty.Project activitiesStudents involved in STARS GAME project will not be passive learners, but they’ll be actively involved, thanks to a gaming and inquiry-based approach. Moreover, the project includes activities involving researchers, as a source of inspirations for pupils, raising their curiosity towards scientific research and boosting enrolment in scientific fields of study. A crucial aspect of the project activities and its innovative approach is given by the methodology used to develop the escape room in the project, the inquiry-based learning, that was never carried out by the project participants in this form. Workshops with trainers and scientific communicators aimed at teachers and researchers are organized in 4 countries during 3 years. Innovative methods for teaching science are applied and as results guidelines are produced for teaching science with an inquiry based and game-based learning approach with surveys and teachers kit. Recommendations for the escape room are developed.Workshops with scientific communicators aimed at students will be organized in 4 countries. A digital escape room is designed and developed to stimulate the interest of students from 10 to 13 year old in the field of biomedical research, through active involvement and a gamification of educational activities. The laboratory consists of a sort of investigation on an unknown pathology in which teams of researchers, in different fields, compare their work in order to understand the disease. The output is the web application.The escape room is implemented in schools in Italy, Germany, Spain and Slovenia during the 3 phases of the project. The results are the development of a Digital Escape Room in 5 languages focused on inquiry based and game based learning in science education.The results of the workshops and the implementation of Escape room are for researchers, teachers and students the development of the methodologies for researchers to increase the capacity to communicate science and the development of methodologies for teachers for the science teaching; Guidelines developed for teaching science with an inquiry based and game based approach and Guidelines developed for scientific communication for researchers.The results for students are a larger and reinforced interest and trust to scientific research and the development of a scientific approach, increased critical thinking, and a multidisciplinary vision of scientific research characterised by multidisciplinary approach.The communication activities and 4 multipliers event allow further dissemination with the largest number of schools and involve teachers who may join the project in the future.

SAGITTARIUS aim to optimize the clinical management of locoregional stage II high-risk/stage III colon cancer (LRCC). Approximately half of all LRCC patients relapse within two years from time of curative surgery because of imaging-undetectable micro-metastatic residual disease (MMRD). Given the lack of reliable predictors of individual risk, LRCC patients are treated with a one-fits-all adjuvant chemotherapy. This gunshot approach results in either over- or under-treatment. Measuring circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the patients’ bloodstream can diagnose MMRD. Retrospective studies show that ctDNA detection after surgery predicts cancer recurrence with high sensitivity and specificity. SAGITTARIUS will deploy a ctDNA assay to detect the absence, presence, or persistence of MMRD in individual patients. The diagnosis of MMRD will guide and personalize therapeutic interventions. SAGITTARIUS is a pragmatic trial whereby real-world patients are treated in two parallel trials based on their MMRD status and the genomic landscape of their tumors. ctDNA positive patients are randomized to conventional or personalized targeted therapy. ctDNA negative patients are randomized to a physician-driven therapy or a Wait&See strategy. The efficacy and effectiveness of this potentially ground-breaking new strategy of care will be measured via multiple outcomes, including safety and time to events variables, patient-reported outcome measures, and health-economics evaluation. Since colon cancer deaths are usually associated with metastases rather than local disease, MMRD will also reclassify how this disease is perceived by clinicians. This new prism will allow for treatment to be better matched against the tumor biology, also allowing for better monitoring – via ctDNA – to assess disease evolution in each patient, minimizing harm and maximizing the odds of cure. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Diagnosis and treatment.