The prevention and care of chronic diseases are among the priorities of the EU's current health strategy. Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), one of the most common chronic degenerative diseases, is often accompanied by high mortality and morbidity, and it has a high socio-economic impact. On the other hand, with the incidence rate of 13,3 million cases per year, Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) is a major contributor to the global health burden and the global death toll of this disease is 1,7 million deaths yearly. Amidst the rising tide of AKI and CKD burden, the global nephrology workforce has failed to expand in order to meet the growing healthcare needs of this vulnerable patient population, thus cooperation at an international level would be necessary to boost workforce and sustainable models of healthcare delivery. The Nephrology Partnership for Advancing Technology in Healthcare (N-PATH) will develop a European Strategic Partnership between Universities and clinic centres specialized in diagnostic and interventional nephrology with the overall objective (1) to stimulate the appeal in nephrology among learners at European level and (2) to improve the educational continuum, in order to respond to the unmet need to develop a policy framework for the provision of high-quality services within European health system.SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES developing innovative and multidisciplinary educational path with a patient-centered approach focusing on diagnostic and interventional nephrologyfostering the knowledge transfer from research to clinical practice in order to tackle risk management in health carestrengthening the cooperation among Universities and clinical centres in order to boost innovation and exchange of best practicespromoting the positive aspects of nephrology careers at European levelThe present proposal will jointly develop 4 curricula: Molecular Pathology, Vascular Access, Ultrasound and Peritoneal Dialysis.TARGET: 40 junior nephrologists (≤ 40 years old)

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most lethal of female cancers, often termed a “silent killer”. DISARM’s overall approach to tackle the significant gaps in hereditary OC management lies in tackling both key elements of risk assessment and early detection. The project will investigate multifactorial risk assessment versus standard practices in 4 EU Member States (MS) (Lithuania, Portugal, Czech Republic, and Greece), and will upscale and validate a set of easy-to-use, highly accurate and affordable technologies in five countries (UK, Lithuania, Portugal, Czech Republic, and Greece). Several intelligent digital assets will optimally support and enhance our clinical studies, while a range of multifaceted activities will ensure the future uptake and adoption of DISARM solutions. The project aligns with the Innovation Action character of this topic by focusing on both mature technologies that can be upscaled in routine healthcare and on emerging technologies that have already shown a potential to justify larger scale validation activities. Our ultimate ambition is to holistically investigate the preconditions and set the stage for rolling out proven solutions in routine OC risk assessment, and in parallel to create further evidence for the introduction of novel promising elements in early detection programmes. DISARM gathers 26 partners from 12 countries (10 EU MS, the UK and Canada), thereby exhibiting a significant geographic coverage, strengthening European and international collaboration and ensuring widespread diffusion of the project results. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on ‘Prevention and Early Detection (early detection heritable cancers)

GRIP on MASH will address the unmet public health need of reducing disease burden and comorbidities associated with Metabolic dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD). Together with seven medical technology, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, we will devise a sustainable and scalable GRIP on MASH Platform that will enable access to at-risk patients developing or having MASLD through the early detection of this condition at the primary care level. This Platform will allow A) the early detection of patients with MASLD: distributed in 12 European Centers of Excellence (CoEs), 10,000 patients at high risk of MASLD - defined as patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, obesity or arterial hypertension - will be screened and characterized; B) better patients’ stratification: the Platform will comprise artificial intelligence-based decision support tools that will make use of existing and novel biomarkers/biomarker combinations. Their predictive accuracy will be tested at the primary care level; there we will perform multi-OMICs analysis (proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, genomics, metagenomics and fluxomics) in fasted blood samples and we will explore imaging biomarkers/organ-on-a-chip to find future non-invasive diagnostic alternatives for the current standard (liver biopsies); and C) personalized lifestyle advice, by exploring evidence-based lifestyle features and the effect of nutritional recommendations: among the cohorts at the CoEs, we will use validated questionnaires to assess physical activity, diet, sleep, smoking, alcohol consumption, and perception of stress. Integrating patients’ perspectives with the participation of two patient organizations, the trustworthiness and sustainability of our GRIP on MASH Platform will be assessed by investigating potential economic, ethical and regulatory barriers to its future adoption. GRIP on MASH will change healthcare practice in MASLD and reduce the disease burden for patients.

While Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the main cause of death worldwide, they are responsible for half of all deaths in Europe. The overall ageing of the European population and improving survival of patients with coronary heart disease has created a large population of older adults eligible for secondary prevention. Despite the established efficacy of cardiovascular medications, suboptimal adherence reduces their effectiveness and is the primary reason for suboptimal clinical benefit, contributing significantly to worsening of diseases and deaths at the population level. SECURE will be the first trial testing the efficacy of a fixed dose combination (FDC) polypill for secondary cardiovascular prevention in the elderly population (≥ 65 years old). The main objective is to evaluate the potential benefit of the FDC as a component of a cost-effective, globally available and comprehensive treatment strategy for secondary prevention of cardiovascular events (death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, stroke, and hospitalisation requiring revascularisation) as compared to standard therapy (the three components of the polypill given separately). As part of the secondary endpoints, SECURE will compare the effect of both strategies on adherence and intermediate measures of risk factor control such as lipids and blood pressure. Importantly, it will also measure the pharmacoeconomic impact of the FDC intervention as well as regional differences in all outcomes. The five-year project will thus involve subjects from seven different countries: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. The findings and conclusions obtained in SECURE will allow the drafting of clinical guidelines and recommendations that will provide useful guidance and will serve as a reference framework for all stakeholders involved in tackling major challenges related to secondary prevention and treatment of chronic diseases in the elderly population.