Chronic aortic aneurysms are permanent and localized dilations of the aorta that remain asymptomatic for long periods of time but continue to increase in diameter before they eventually rupture. Left untreated, the patients’ prognosis is dismal, since the internal bleeding of the rupture brings about sudden death. Although successful treatment cures the disease, the risky procedures can result in paraplegia from spinal cord ischaemia or even death, particularly for aneurysms extending from the thoracic to the abdominal aorta and thus involving many segmental arteries to the spinal cord, i.e. thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms of Crawford type II. Although various strategies have achieved a remarkable decrease in the incidence of paraplegia, it is still no less than 10 to 20%. However, it has been found that the deliberate occlusion of the segmental arteries to the paraspinous collateral network finally supplying the spinal cord does not increase rates of permanent paraplegia. A therapeutic option, ‘minimally invasive segmental artery coil embolization’ has been devised which proceeds in a ‘staged’ way to occlude groups of arteries under highly controlled conditions after which time must be allowed for arteriogenesis to build a robust collateral blood supply. PAPA-ARTiS is a phase II trial to demonstrate that a staged treatment approach can reduce paraplegia and mortality dramatically. It can be expected to have both a dramatic impact on the individual patient's quality of life if saved from a wheelchair, and also upon financial systems through savings in; 1) lower costs in EU health care; 2) lower pay-outs in disability insurance (est. at 500k in Year 1), and; 3) loss of economic output from unemployment. Approx. 2500 patients a year in Europe undergo these high risk operations with a cumulative paraplegia rate of over 15%; therefore >100M per year in costs can be avoided and significantly more considering the expected elimination of type II endoleaks.

This proposal for a European Cancer Patient Digital Centre (ECPDC) Information Portal, EU-CIP, addresses the information needs of cancer patients, survivors, relatives, and caregivers. EU-CIP aims to create a patient-centric cancer information portal that improves health literacy, empowers patients, and reduces inequalities in access to cancer care information across Europe. The EU-CIP primary goal is to improve quality of life and enhance cancer patient care by improving access to general and personalized knowledge, delivering comprehensive information on cancer prevention, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment options including risks, side effects and late effects as well as information on rehabilitation and management of recurrence and palliative care. EU-CIP will prioritise high-incidence cancers, those with poor prognosis, and paediatric cancers. A Common Library of Contents available to all Member States will be created and EU-CIP nodes will be deployed in 10 Member States. The Library of Contents will use information from evidence-based sources such as the Knowledge Centre on Cancer and the European Cancer Information Service, existing Cancer Information Portals, and European guidelines. A governance framework for scalable content creation and review processes supported by AI tooling will be established. The consortium partners, including several patient organisations, will ensure that the patients’ view is reflected in the content review and technology usability aspects. The EU-CIP Central and local nodes will be built in a modular fashion to allow integration with existing electronic health infrastructures. To align with the EU Cancer Mission goal to improve lives through prevention, EU-CIP will raise awareness about the Mission and Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. Alignment with the Mission’s overall plans will be realized through collaboration with the EU funded projects of the related 01-01/01-02 calls.

The European Rare Diseases Research Alliance (ERDERA) aims to improve the health and well-being of the 30 million people living with a rare disease in Europe, by making Europe a world leader in Rare Disease (RD) research and innovation, to support concrete health benefits to rare disease patients, through better prevention, diagnosis and treatment. This Partnership will deliver a RD ecosystem that builds on the successes of previous programmes by supporting robust patient need-led research, developing new diagnostic methods and pathways, spearheading the digital transformational change connecting the dots between care, patient data and research, while ensuring strong alignment of strategies in RD research across countries and regions. Structuring goal-oriented public-private collaborations targeted at interventions all along the R&D value chain will ensure that the journey from knowledge to patient impact is expedited, thereby optimising EU innovation potential in RD. To support its ambition and missions ERDERA has been designed as a comprehensive and integrated ecosystem of which structure can be compared to an institute encompassing three main parts: (i) funding, (ii) internal (in house) Clinical Research Network that implements research activities targeting clinical trial readiness of RDs and accelerating diagnosis and translation of research discovery into improved patient care, and (iii) related supporting services (Data, Expertise, Education and Training) as well as an acceleration hub that serve external and internal RD community, all supported by all-embracing coordination and strategy and foundational (inter)national alignment.