The 15-month coordination and support action “4.UNCAN.eu” will generate a strategic agenda to launch UNCAN.eu, a European initiative to UNderstand CANcer proposed by the Mission Board and the European Beating Cancer Plan. This research agenda will be built with the final aim of achieving a new breakthrough in cancer prevention and treatment that will contribute to saving European citizens’ lives and help ensuring an optimal quality of life to disease survivors. To reach a new level of understanding, UNCAN.eu will take advantage of recent advances in research data generation and data sciences. Reliable, high-quality cancer research data generated by experimental model analysis and collected from longitudinal follow-up of cancer patients will be shared and integrated at an unprecedented scale within a Federated Cancer Research data hub, in the context of the General Data Protection Regulation. This information will be used by relevant players in Europe and beyond to address urgent and essential scientific and medical challenges in cancer prevention, early diagnosis, treatment and survivorship, in males and females of various ages. These challenges, identified in close interaction with European patients and citizens, will be tackled through competitive, ambitious and innovative, cross-border and trans-disciplinary research programmes built in a problem-solving manner. The definition of challenges will integrate inequalities in cancer research across regions and member states in order to boost the research potential of less-developed regions in Europe. Players will be committed to open science principles, including FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) guiding principles for scientific data collection, management and stewardship. The new understanding gained from the collection and analysis of this wealth of data will apply secondarily to other diseases.

Survivors of AYA cancer are at risk of treatment-related mortality and morbidity (late effects). The impact on the quality of life (QoL) of AYA cancer survivors and their families, as well as the societal and economic burdens, is significant. However, these impacts can be prevented or reduced by long-term, systematic screening and follow-up (Survivorship Care), which enables the early detection of treatable late effects and timely interventions to preserve health, increase empowerment, manage chronic conditions and improve QoL. PanCare4AYA will improve Survivorship Care for AYA cancer survivors across Europe by developing an international clinical guideline for screening and follow-up. This guideline will be implemented via a novel person-centred screening programme (AYA Cancer Survivor Screen). An implementation study involving 1,000 AYA cancer survivors in 11 European countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom) will be conducted to test the AYA Cancer Survivor Screen programme, including peer support. The study will look at effectiveness (empowerment, mental health, psychosocial functioning and other QoL-related outcomes), healthcare delivery and screening-related health, experiences of AYA cancer survivors and HCPs with implementing the state-of-the-art screening programme within a range of different healthcare settings, and feasibility. Innovative digital tools will be used in France, Italy, Lithuania and Netherlands. Ensuring the scalability of the AYA Cancer Survivor Screen programme is crucial for achieving enduring, real-world improvements to Survivorship Care for AYA cancer survivors. Therefore, the project includes the assessment of barriers and facilitators for the screening programme and development of freely available materials to support sustainable maintenance and scale-up of AYA Cancer Survivor Screen in additional clinics in future. This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects on “Quality of life (AYA)”.