ERA-NET TRANSCAN-2 JTC 2017

Joint Trasnational Call (JTC) 2017

Thanks to the positive experience of the participation in the 2016 Joint Transnational Call of the TRANSCAN 2 program, Fondazione Regionale per la Ricerca Biomedica also joined the Joint Transnational Call 2017, dedicated to the study of rare cancers, entitled "Joint Transnational Call for Proposals 2017 (JTC 2017) : Translational research on rare cancers ”.

Rare tumors are defined based on their incidence, in particular, a tumor is considered rare when no more than 6 new cases are diagnosed every 100,000 people a year. At European level there is an initiative called RARECARE (http://www.rarecare.eu/) which deals with monitoring and cataloguing, through pathology registers, all rare cancers present in Europe.

Based on these data, a list of rare tumors * has been defined which represents the starting point for JTC 2017, whose projects will have to focus on one or more tumors listed in the document in question. The nearly 200 rare cancers on the list represent more than 20% of new cancer cases diagnosed in a year in Europe.

If, on the one hand, the low number of patients suffering from rare tumors is a positive element, on the other it makes research on the subject particularly difficult. The small number of samples prevents a significant statistic on the results of the research; moreover, the low number of patients inevitably ends up having an impact on the quality and availability of the sample, more often analysed to make a diagnosis and no longer recoverable for an in-depth analysis of the molecular mechanisms underlying the onset of the tumor.

In order to overcome this problem, the JTC 2017 (which has the great added value of a newly-created transnational network) wants to promote the exchange of data and materials, thus allowing an effective and original research.

The networks will have the potential to develop projects that describe and use multi-modal approaches, mixing standard therapies with unconventional approaches, orphan drugs that can be used in rare tumors or new therapies that are applicable to different rare diseases and are therefore economically advantageous and sustainable.

In particular, the projects participating in the Call must be developed according to these three themes (AIMS):

1) Studies that exploit and combine data on other clinical studies, bio-repositories and epidemiological resources;

2) Development and use of translational research platforms (eg patient-derived xenograft models, organoids, tissue collections) to study drug responses / resistance and toxicity, perform drug screening or re-use approved anticancer drugs.

3) Implementation of precision biomarkers for better stratification of clinical cohorts. 

Thanks to FRRB's adhesion to the Call as funding agency, the major regional players will be able to present a project proposal and obtain funding for their activities: in fact, for this Call, Fondazione Regionale per la Ricerca Biomedica has allocated a total budget of Euro 1,250,000.00.

Visit the official project page: http://www.transcanfp7.eu

Visit the official JTC call 2017 page, where you can download the call documents: http://www.transcanfp7.eu/index.php/calls/fourth-joint-transnational-call-jtc-2017.html

* (Http://www.ecpc.org/Documents/Projects/RARECAREnet/RARECAREnet_list_of_rare_cancers.xlsx)