The 3 big C’s and more in health research and innovation: COVID-19 – Cancer – Cardiovascular diseases
26th May 2021 at 6:47 am
The ubiquity of COVID-19 in our society is reflected in substantial EU funding that has been made available for COVID-19 related research and innovation in the past year. Starting with emergency calls in Horizon 2020 and most recently the € 150 million worth HERA Incubator to tackle new variants (read more), these urgent and necessary efforts to develop vaccines, drugs and other therapies and solutions to help combat the virus may give the impression that other diseases areas were almost forgotten about. However, this is not the case as we will see very soon when the official Work Programme for Cluster 1 – Health under the 9th Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, will be published this spring.
With a total budget of €1.97 billion for 2021 to 2022, the Horizon Europe Cluster 1 – Health will contribute to achieving the EU’s Cancer Mission and other disease areas. Projections show that people newly diagnosed with cancer in Europe will increase to more than 4.3 million and cancer deaths in the EU are set to increase by more than 24% by 2035. As a major societal challenge, fighting cancer is the number one European health priority and the mission aims to save three million more lives by 2030. Following the recent adoption of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, the EU has an ambitious new plan to conquer this devastating disease through prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment, and the quality of life of cancer patients and survivors. Collaborative cancer research and innovation is key in this fight and can be not only tackled through the Cluster 1 – Health, but also other initiatives, such as the recently launched European Innovation Council, the Innovative Health Initiative, or EU4Health. The third big C in health research and innovation – next to COVID-19 and Cancer – are cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the currently globally leading cause of death. Despite the strong focus on the cancer mission area, we can assume that CVD-related research and innovation will not be halted and continued to be strongly supported within Horizon Europe and other European funding schemes. In fact, looking at the draft Health Work Programme 2021/2022, we can expect several topics that are rather broad and are not limited to either COVID-19, or cancer, or CVD (see the full list of expected Health call topics for the next submission deadline in September 2021 below).
Although the Horizon Europe Health Programme offers a wide array of funding opportunities for scientists, companies and other organisations, we can expect a fierce competition similar to the previous Horizon 2020 Health Programme. Our initial analysis of the upcoming call shows the key facts and estimated success rates, although the latter are based on currently available numbers and previous experience, and might be subject to change.
In case the Horizon Europe Health Programme is not for you, we are happy to help you find other funding opportunities. Especially in health research, there are several other grant schemes, such as the already mentioned Innovative Health Initiative (formerly known as the Innovation Medicine Initiative) and EU4Health (previously the 3rd Health Programme). New initiatives are expected to be launched soon, including the following: European Partnership for One Health/AMR Antimicrobial Resistance, European Partnership for EU-Africa Global Health, European Partnership for personalised medicine, ERA for Health Research and European Partnership on Rare Diseases as well as the European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases and the ERA-NET for personalised medicine. Stay tuned with our Health blogs and get the latest updates.
| Destination | Call topic | Type | Title | EU contribution per project estimation | Anticipated number of funded projects |
| Destination 1 – Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-STAYHLTH-01-02 | RIA | Towards a molecular and neurological understanding of mental health and mental illness for the benefit of citizens and patients | EUR 10 M | 6 |
| Destination 2 – Living and working in a health-promoting environment | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-ENVHLTH-02-01 | RIA | Exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) and health | EUR 8 M | 4 |
| Destination 2 – Living and working in a health-promoting environment | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-ENVHLTH-02-02 | RIA | Indoor air quality and health | EUR 8 M | 5 |
| Destination 2 – Living and working in a health-promoting environment | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-ENVHLTH-02-03 | RIA | Health impacts of climate change costs and benefits of action and inaction | EUR 10 M | 6 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-01 | RIA | Improved supportive, palliative, survivorship and end-of-life care of cancer patients | EUR 6 M | 8 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-02 | RIA | Building a European innovation platform for the repurposing of medicinal products | EUR 25 M | 2 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-03 | RIA | Innovative approaches to enhance poverty – related diseases research in sub-Saharan Africa | EUR 8 M | 5 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-04 | RIA | Clinical validation of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for treatment and care | EUR 6 M | 10 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-06 | RIA | Building a European partnership for pandemic preparedness | EUR 7 M | 9 |
| Destination 4 – Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health care | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05-01 | RIA | Enhancing quality of care and patient safety | EUR 5 M | 5 |
| Destination 4 – Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health care | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05-02 | RIA | Data-driven decision-support tools for better health care delivery and policy-making with a focus on cancer | EUR 10 M | 4 |
| Destination 5 – Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06-02 | RIA | Next generation advanced therapies to treat highly prevalent and high burden diseases with unmet medical needs | EUR 6 M | 10 |
| Destination 5 – Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06-03 | RIA | Innovative tools for use and re-use of health data (in particular of electronic health records and/or patient registries) | EUR 8 M | 4 |
| Destination 6 – Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-IND-07-01 | RIA | Green pharmaceuticals | EUR 8 M | 5 |
| Destination 5 – Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06-01 | IA | Smart medical devices and their surgical implantation for use in resource-constrained settings | EUR 6 M | 4 |
| Destination 2 – Living and working in a health-promoting environment | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-ENVHLTH-03-01 | COFUND | European partnership for the assessment of risks from chemicals (PARC) | EUR 200 M | 1 |
| Destination 1 – Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-STAYHLTH-01-03 | CSA | Healthy Citizens 2.0 – Supporting digital empowerment and health literacy of citizens | EUR 3 M | 1 |
| Destination 1 – Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-STAYHLTH-01-04 | CSA | A roadmap for personalised prevention | EUR 3 M | 1 |
| Destination 1 – Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-STAYHLTH-01-05 | CSA | Mobilising a network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for the Health Cluster | EUR 3 M | 1 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-07 | CSA | Personalised medicine and infectious diseases: understanding the individual host response to viruses (e.g. SARS-CoV-2) | EUR 0.5 M | 1 |
| Destination 3 – Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04-05 | CSA | A roadmap towards the creation of the European partnership on One Health antimicrobial resistance (OH AMR) | EUR 2 M | 1 |
| Destination 4 – Ensuring access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health care | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-CARE-05-04 | CSA | Health care innovation procurement network | EUR 5 M | 1 |
| Destination 6 – Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-IND-07-02 | CSA | Development, procurement and responsible management of new antimicrobials | EUR 2 M | 1 |
| Destination 6 – Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry | HORIZON-HLTH-2021-IND-07-03 | CSA | Promoting a trusted mHealth label in Europe: uptake of technical specifications for quality and reliability of health and wellness apps | EUR 2 M | 1 |
Health projects and accelopment
We have long-standing experience in supporting grant applications in proposal writing, grant preparation, project management, dissemination and exploitation. From the very beginning of your application, our dedicated team will support you and the whole consortium to ensure your proposal is strong and competitive.
We are currently involved in four ongoing Health projects in Horizon 2020: VANGUARD, EXIMIOUS and EURO SHOCK (all Research and Innovation Actions) and the COVID-19 focused Innovation Action ENVISION. Additionally, we are a partner organisation in five newly started/-ing health-related Horizon 2020 Innovative Training Networks, namely AGePOP, CAPSTONE, CONSENSE, InPharma and ALLODD. Thanks to our expertise in more than 50 FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects, we assist Coordinators with administration and management tasks and support the dissemination and exploitation of projects’ results. For more information about our proposal preparation services for Health projects, please contact Dr. Jeanette Müller or Géraldine Messmer.
