The innovation ecosystem of the EU is suffering from a strong fragmentation with a big gap between innovation leader regions and emerging innovators. This divide severely limits the potential for innovative Start-ups from emerging and moderate innovator region to access capital and get adequate support for bringing their innovations to market. To tackle these challenges, INNOVATE-EU will strengthen and connect five local innovation ecosystems: the innovation leader region Baden-Württemberg (BW) in Germany, the moderate innovator regions of Lithuania and Aragon in Spain and the emerging innovator regions of Latvia and Northeast Romania. Its goal is to address the innovation gap between these regions, connect them to an EU-wide network of innovation ecosystems, and strengthen their deep tech Start-ups and Scale-ups by building on three (fundamental) pillars: i) a detailed analysis of the target groups and needs of the local innovation ecosystems followed by knowledge exchange and a detailed action plan to address the disparities, ii) the formation of the interconnected and inclusive INNOVATE-EU innovation support community and its connection to European communities, iii) direct support and trainings for promising deep tech Start-ups and Scale-ups providing them with the necessary knowledge, tools, and contacts for successfully upscaling their business models and bringing their products to market. Through this approach INNOVATE-EU will create an interconnected and inclusive innovation ecosystem with access to a wider European innovation support community and concrete pathways for existing and emerging deep tech entrepreneurs to access growth and investment opportunities. This will result in the overcoming of the innovation gap between moderately and highly innovative regions in Europe and the unveiling of disruptive and otherwise hidden Start-ups and Scale-ups in deep tech.

The general purpose of PRECISEU is connecting innovation ecosystems across Europe to efficiently advance towards a truly personalised healthcare, transferring practices and solutions from region to region and scaling up deep-tech healthcare innovations based on advanced therapies medicinal products and health data across Europe. The PRECISEU consortium is composed of Regional Authorities and innovation players from 9 NUTS 1 and 2 regions, supported by clusters, universities, research centres and infrastructures, NGOs and networks, and engaging regional and European innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs across the EU health innovation space. Also involved as partner in the consortium, one Ukrainian Region, Rivne, represented by the Rivne Medical Cluster, has a relevant role as Ukraine is open for cooperation, innovation and joint projects for reconstruction. The European continent faces a set of challenges in terms of the swift and effective implementation of medical care, which were brought sharply into focus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Healthcare remains a concurrent gap between innovation leaders and emerging and moderate innovators (classification according to the Regional Innovation Scoreboard, RIS), which impacts all spheres (economics, social and living standards), and which requires significant expertise and knowledge as well as expansive collaboration between innovation networks and all stakeholders and communities across Europe. PRECISEU is aware that taking next steps in the development and organisation of PM is a key issue for Europe, and that more coordination efforts between key European stakeholders is necessary to foster its implementation. By focusing on health data and advanced therapies as key drivers of personalized medicine models, PRECISEU will not only provide regional ecosystems with European connectivity but will most importantly address the significant and urgent needs of the regions.

Smart Health is EU Strategic Value Chain that contributes to growth, jobs and competitiveness. Health Data is the main enabler for the value chain, but it also depends on cutting edge technologies - AI, cloud computing, IoT, to integrate the dispersed knowledge and support innovative healthcare solutions and services. EC sets the creation of a European Health Data Space as a main priority, to promote better exchange and access to health data. On a regional level, the RIS3 strategies of the involved widening countries - Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Cyprus emphasize the need for based on Big Data, AI and IoT digitalized healthcare, to enable personalized medicine, informed decisions, and improved disease prediction. RIS3 strategies also outline the need for more funding for R&I, policy coherence and development of territorially join innovation strategies. A cross country coordinated approach is needed to align the separate endeavours towards an Excellent South-East Europe Smart Health Innovation Ecosystem enabled by a Regional Smart Health Data Space. VELES raises the level of innovation excellence in the South-East EU through creating a sustainable place-based innovation ecosystem, enabled by Regional Smart Health Data Space, including novel transformational framework, R&I and investment strategy and action plan for research, development and adoption of innovative and secure digital solutions that underpin the delivery of sustainable healthcare services. The Regional Smart Health Data Space will be demonstrated through the design of 4 interrelated pilots on Cancer treatment (Greece); Personalised/precision medicine of Alzheimer (Bulgaria); Cerebral tumours (Romania) and Dementia (Cyprus). The aim of VELES is to foster health data sharing regional and national strategies, to secure improved clinical practice, to preserve patient’s privacy and to empower citizens’ smart healthcare through access to innovative, cyber secure and data driven digital health services.

The REVERT project will address the specific challenge of understanding at system level the pathophysiology of mCRC cancer in patients responding well or poorly to therapies, in order to design optimal strategy for mCRC on a case by case basis, with therapeutic interventions modulated depending on patient’s features. Accordingly, REVERT will build up an innovative artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision support system using the experience and the real-world data of several general Hospitals operating in the EU healthcare system ultimately aimed at developing an improved and innovative model of combinatorial therapy - based on a personalised medicine approach - that identifies the most efficient and cost-effective therapeutic intervention for patients with unresectable mCRC. This goal will be pursued through the building of the REVERT-DataBase (RDB) thanks to a large number of standardized biobank samples with related structured data, and clinical databases (including known clinical and biological features as well as new, potential prognostic/predictive biomarkers) from several major clinical European centres. The RDB, in turn, will be used to build a sophisticated computational framework based on AI to evaluate its impact on survival and quality of life in a prospective clinical trial through testing of new treatment sequences of the available and authorised molecular targeted drugs in patients with mCRC. In the end, the REVERT will also generate an EU- network among SMEs, Research Institutions, Clinical Centres and Biobanks focused on R&D in the field of AI-Health for the development of personalised medicine. The REVERT software system will ensure the integrity of data and privacy management in respect to national rules, the EU's GDPR (Reg. EU 2016/679) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The RDB and AI services will be open to all partners during and after project’s completion, available also to EU research Institutions for future studies.

SECURE project aims to make a major contribution to the sustainability of medical isotope production and its safe application in Europe. It is focusing on promising developments in the design of irradiation targets, production routes for existing and new isotopes in nuclear therapy and diagnostics. Isotopes critical in the success of nuclear medicine are selected and research activities are identified to address some of the major challenges in securing its future availability, with the objectives: 1. to remove critical barriers along the production of its selected alpha and beta emitting isotopes that restrict a sustainable production, 2. to develop a framework of guidance and recommendations that enables exploring the full clinical potential of alpha and beta particle therapy and its safe application 3. to provide important lessons learned that act as a demonstration case for addressing issues in upscaling and sustained isotope production. At present, Ra-223 is the only radiopharmaceutical which has been granted marketing authorization to treat adults with prostate cancer. This has paved the way for a wider use of other alpha emitters such as Ac-225 or Bi-213. The expected demand of nuclear medicine for novel alpha emitters and beta- emitters requires re-evaluation of their production methods and inventories of target materials and parent radionuclides. The ambition of SECURE consortium is to identify and efficiently use the current resources for new radionuclides, in particular for alpha emitters and the relevant beta emitting theranostic radionuclides. The development of alternative technologies for production of such therapeutic radionuclides for improved patient treatment requires multidisciplinary scientific and technological knowledge including physics, chemistry, material science, machining of target materials, chemistry, biology and radiobiology, radiopharmacy and nuclear medicine. All this chain of expertise is present in SECURE consortium.