The European Commission published its Beating Cancer Plan

The Beating Cancer Plan’s action focuses on the entire disease pathway: prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment as well as quality of life of cancer patients and survivors. It will be implemented with the support of the EU funding instruments with a total of €4 billion.
The Plan outlines the potential of new technologies and recent scientific advances to better address cancer. Adapting the use of innovation to cancer research is presented as an essential step forward to understand how to prevent, detect, diagnose, and treat this disease more effectively.
The Plan is structured around ten flagship initiatives, supported by a number of other concrete actions and reinforced by parallel Commission’s initiatives. Among these flagships, the following 5 initiatives are of particular relevance for the in silico medicine community:

1. The launch of a Knowledge Centre on Cancer in early 2021

• The Centre will coordinate scientific and technical cancer-related initiatives.

2. The setup of the European Cancer imaging Initiative in 2022

• The Initiative will develop an EU “atlas” of cancer-related imaging, making anonymised images accessible to hospitals, researchers and innovators.
• It aims at providing a common EU data space and improving personalised medicine and innovative solutions.

3. The creation of an EU Network linking recognised National Comprehensive Cancer Centres in every EU Member States

• It will enable the uptake of diagnosis and treatment processes, including training, research and clinical trials.
• The Network will be underpinned by the integration of the existing four rare cancer-focused European Reference Networks (ERNs) and a group of newly created Networks.

4. The establishment of the Cancer Diagnostic and Treatment for All initiative by the end of 2021

• The initiative will optimise cancer diagnosis and treatment and reduce unequal access to personalised medicine.
• A new cross-EU platform will be created share cancer profiles and compare diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for patients with comparable cancer profiles

5. The launch of the Helping Children with Cancer Initiative

• The initiative will aim to ensure that children have access to rapid cancer diagnosis, treatment and care.
• It will support training and enable the sharing of best practice and standards of care for children with cancer. will complement the actions implemented by the new European Reference Networks.

Full information on the Plan can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_342