MADRID, April 8. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) participates in the ‘EU-Africa PerMed Project’ which aims to promote the development and implementation of personalized medicine on a global scale between the European Union and Africa.
The initiative is funded by ‘Horizon 2020’ and aims to promote joint projects and programs for personalized medicine between Europe and Africa, as well as to strengthen bilateral relations in science, technology and innovation in health. The ISCIII, one of the many organizations participating in the project, is coordinating two of its main lines of work.
During the program launch meeting, which took place last month, the first steps were taken to promote the integration of African countries into the activities of the International Consortium for Personalized Medicine (ICPerMed).
Conceived and designed during the coronavirus outbreak, the project addresses the need for global approaches to global threats. The implementation and development of the project is based on six work packages that aim to identify and involve relevant organizations related to health and promote the integration of funding structures and political organizations in ICPerMed.
In addition, it will be aligned with the activities of the EU-Africa research programs already underway, as well as with other bi-regional political actions. In concrete terms, the EU-Africa PerMed project will be developed over the next 4 years by 13 organizations from both Europe (6 partners) and Africa (7 partners).
The ISCIII participates by co-leading the communication and dissemination activities of the project, together with the intergovernmental organization ECSA-HC (Health Community of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa), which provides regional health cooperation between the encourages and promotes Member States.
Likewise, the ISCIII is also responsible for promoting the integration of African funding agencies into ‘ERA PerMed’, an initiative led by the Institute and co-funded by the European Union that coordinates and pools the efforts of its 32 partners to fund transnational research projects. in medicine. personalized.
Precision medicine is one of the areas where the ISCIII is most involved. In addition to coordinating ERA PerMed since 2017, an international personalized medicine initiative involving the major national agencies funding biomedical research, the ISCIII has launched the call for grants for the Precision Medicine Infrastructure related to science and technology ( IMPaCT), as part of the ISCIII’s Strategic Action in Health 2017-2020.
The award of these grants for the IMPaCT call, for a total value of EUR 25.8 million, represents a further step towards the implementation of precision medicine in the National Health System through a science and innovation-based strategy, which has 77 , Will have 3 million euros for its development over the next two years. The programs included in IMPaCT are tailored to different areas that will be developed in the future national strategy: Predictive Medicine; Genomic Medicine and Data Science.
In addition to other initiatives, the ISCIII is also involved in the European project ‘PERMIT’, which works to seek methodological improvements that facilitate the development and implementation of precision medicine, and in the ‘Initiative 1+ Million Genomes’, which aims to generate standardized and secure genomic information available to be shared at European level through a federated access platform; The goal is to consolidate a collaborative genomic information project to advance research, disease prevention, best clinical practice and treatment adaptation.