The public-private partnership, READI, seeks to help clinical studies (CS) to finally serve the complete general population, and therefore more patients. To date CS have struggled to recruit and retain participants from diverse backgrounds and communities, such as marginalized or disadvantaged groups (e.g., sexual, gender, age, cultural, and socioeconomic cohorts). The resulting knowledge gaps entrench or increase health disparities. The READI consortium strives to tackle these challenges by fostering a more cohesive and integrated CS ecosystem for underserved (US) and underrepresented (UR) communities. It will actively connect all key stakeholders who can facilitate access to a wide range of patient populations. It will provide these stakeholders with the necessary tools, training programs, and approaches essential for the recruitment and retention of US/UR patients in CS. In addition, it will design, build and implement a digital platform which is patient-centred, sustainable, open and innovative. This will foster improved access to CS information and READI tools, while also supporting patient connections with the created communities. Finally, at least 4 CS will be used for testing the effectiveness of the developed tools and approaches. READI has a three-fold objective: to help US/UR communities overcome CS participation barriers (e.g., lack of information/awareness, mistrust, poor communication, geographic limitations, prejudice), which in turn will improve research of many diseases and conditions, preventative care and treatment effectiveness in different demographic groups, and better serve society. READI’s success will draw from its interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder, consortium composition of 73 organizations from 18 countries, with key expertise in drug development and CS (design and operations), engagement strategies for US/UR populations, digital platform development, training and capability building initiatives, effective communication and dissemination, long-term sustainability, ethics and regulatory affairs.

IbD® will create a holistic platform for facilitating process intensification in processes in which solids are an intrinsic part, the cornerstone of which will be an intensified-by-design® (IbD). The IbD approach is hinged on the use of robust data about a process to ‘redesign’, modify, adapt and alter that process in a continuous, intensified system, and will be the new paradigm in the intensification of processes based on statistical, analytical and risk management methodologies in the design, development and processing of high quality safe and tailored chemicals, pharmaceuticals, minerals, ceramics, etc. under intensified processes. The IbD Project will deliver the EU process industry with an affordable and comprehensive devices-and-processes design-platform endeavoured to facilitate process intensification (PI), which specially targets -but is not limited to- solid materials processing. Five PI industry case studies will be implemented in mining, ceramics, pharmaceutical, non-ferrous metals and chemical processes using the IbD approach and to validate the IbD methodologies, tools, PI modules, control and fouling remediation strategies and the ICT Platform itself for the industrial implementation of PI in processes involving solids. The Platform includes design modules for the commonest intensified reactors-Rotating fluidized beds, micro-structured reactor and spinning disk, among others, as well as a generic Module Builder -equipped with a set of both proprietary and third-parties design tools- for designs carried out on the basis of radically novel ideas. The IbD Platform output is basically a data set that comprises the intensified reactor design -ready to be built or assembled-, an optimised whole process design including the upstream/downstream intensified unit operations and their solids handling capability, as well as cleaning methods, etc. and the expected economic and environmental quantitative impacts.

The main goal of MULTI2HYCAT is to design, obtain proof of concept (2 gr.) and upscale in a pre-pilot reactor (20-50 gr.) a new class of hierarchically-porous organic-inorganic hybrid materials, which will be used as active catalysts to carry out multi-step asymmetric catalytic processes with predominantly high conversions (up to 90%) and selectivity (in the range of 80-90%) towards the desired final products. The project promises to solve, for the first time, the low conversion and selectivity of current organosiliceous solids, while at the same time improving the flexibility and versatility and reducing costs of the obtained catalysts, making them attractive for a wide range of industrial applications. To this end, during the project, these novel catalysts will be demonstrated for specialty chemical and pharmaceutical applications, as a concrete prime-mover for subsequent replication. The MULTI2HYCAT project will contribute to the implementation of the EU policies and Directives on competitiveness and sustainability (e.g. Circular Economy Strategy and Resource Efficiency), through the validation of novel concepts in hybrid materials design for heterogeneous catalysis. This includes the preparation and validation of innovative hierarchical porous organic-inorganic materials with several active sites (organocatalysts) perfectly located in specific structural positions in their framework which will be used as single-solid reusable hybrid active catalyst to carry out multi-step catalytic processes. The new material will allow avoiding the extra-efforts associated with isolation of intermediate products, wastes and solvents elimination and purification processes thus enabling more efficient and sustainable catalytic routes from the economic, energetic as well as the environmental points of view.

FACILITATE is a project built on a patient-centered, data-driven, technological platform where an innovative data sharing and re-use process allows the returning of clinical trial data to study participants within a GDPR compliant and approved ethical framework. FACILITATE starts-off by providing clear rules in a trusted ethical, legal and regulatory ecosystem before engaging patients as data generators. This avoids the current situation where clinical data are siloed in separate repositories without any possibility to be used beyond their original single-sided purpose. FACILITATE will provide the technological solutions to comply with GDPR in medical research by building on the empowered stakeholders' willingness to share and re-use their data. The FACILITATE Consortium was constituted by drawing from a broad range of capacities to tackle the ambitious challenges related to future clinical trials, such as preventive, long-term and real-world evidence trials. The Consortium took an innovative approach to the data return to study participants by asking them what they needed to be implemented to feel in a trusted ecosystem. This required all Consortium participants to leverage on their existing networks to bring together stakeholders at all levels in the decision-making chain, including patients, healthcare professionals, software designers, clinical trials repositories processors and controllers, ethicists, lawyers and other active regulators. Having obtained a consent on the data portability FACILITATE will re-use and cross-reference them with those contained in other repositories including RWE data captured across multiple settings and devices. FACILITATE will last 4 years and will participate in the extended Pilot on Open Research Data of Horizon 2020. Its strategy represents a unique and innovative opportunity for medicines drug development and regulation to better understand the clinics of diseases, and to evaluate the effectiveness of products in the healthcare system.

Our objective is to provide a taxonomic and predictive systems medicine model of Atopic Dermatitis and Psoriasis based on clinical and molecular profiling to (i) identify determinants of clinically relevant outcomes (disease manifestation, progression, comorbidity development and treatment response) (ii) improve understanding on shared and distinct disease mechanism(s) and associated signatures, and their relative importance in patient subpopulations and (iii) deliver biomarkers that identify disease trajectories and treatment response for use in drug development and clinical practice. BIOMAP will create a biospecimen and data resource of unprecedented scale and depth, accessible via a central data and analysis portal, harmonizing diverse, high quality, multi-dimensional datasets on skin and blood (whole and single cell), large scale population-based and trial data; parallel clinical research infrastructure will deliver supplementary material flexible to the needs of the consortium. This resource will be systematically analyzed using state-of-the-art methodologies in epidemiology, molecular profiling, skin biology and mathematical modelling to define disease and drug endotypes and how these interact with lifestyle and environmental factors. Selected, highly discriminatory, associated biomarkers will pass through a diagnostics pipeline (novel in-silico trial methods and assay development), ready for immediate translation. BIOMAP is expected to drive drug discovery to target causal mechanisms, shorten drug development pathways, and fundamentally change the diagnosis and management paradigm, from re-active to pro-active strategies that encompass disease biology and life-time trajectory, matching the intervention (prevention, modification of risk factors, therapeutics) with endotypes. Clinically annotated endotypes and associated biomarkers will identify when, in whom and how to intervene to minimize disease impact and improve outcomes.