The advanced age population (>65y) makes up ~20% of the total population in Europe, is the main carrier of chronic diseases and the major end-user group of medications. Yet, despite an ageing society, these end-users are entirely disregarded in the drug development process, which considers only healthy adults aged 18-55. Effective absorption of oral drugs, which remain the preferred form of administration, relies on a sound knowledge of the physiological alterations associated with ageing and of the characteristics of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract in older subjects. Nonetheless, both the knowledge and the experts in this area are lacking. The AGePOP European Training Network (ETN) will boost Europe’s innovation capacity and leadership in oral drug development. Its multisectoral approach will train 11 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) to become the future experts in drug development for the advanced age population, shedding a much needed light on the needs of our ageing society. With an open science philosophy and a multidisciplinary strategy, the ESRs will collect the first ever dataset of physiological characteristics of the GI tract of older people and geriatric patients, developing novel in vitro and in silico tools, e.g. a mobile test kit to evaluate gastric emptying kinetics and an absorption risk calculator to predict adverse effects from altered pharmacokinetics. Complementary training in transferable, business and wider horizon skills will equip the ESRs with an all-rounded skillset. AGePOP is a network of 6 Beneficiaries and 7 Partner Organisations from 5 European countries. Its 3 academic partners with research excellence in oral drug products synergise with renowned clinicians and researchers from 8 leading pharma companies and 1 SME specialised in ETN training. Building on long-standing collaborations, the consortium will provide 11 ESRs with a unique Europe-wide learning experience, preparing them to lead their future careers with confidence and success.

The ModLife project is a European Training Network initiative that brings together 5 leading European universities, 4 global industrial players and 2 SMEs to undertake research and training in the area of product-process innovation, optimization monitoring and control for life sciences and biotechnology industries. Modlife aims to develop Advanced Model-Based Optimization, Monitoring and Control as Enabling Technologies for bioprocess-product development and innovation tailored for the needs in life science industries. ModLife ETN will address excellence in research and training of next generation biochemical and process engineers in life sciences industries through: (1) Offering comprehensive training and knowledge transfer opportunities in multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral fields for training early stage researchers with multidisciplinary knowledge and competences bridging engineering and life sciences (2) Integrating and creating synergies among individually excellent but otherwise fragmented bioprocess engineering research centers across the European union in life sciences and biotechnology industries, (3) Building on advances in modeling and simulation, to develop cutting edge model-based enabling technologies and applications for optimization, monitoring and control for bioprocess and product development and innovation. The ModLife ETN aims at next generation of high performance computing tools and in-situ measurements for increasing efficiency, innovation and competitiveness of Europe’s life sciences and processing industries. Ultimately Modlife aims to help Europe realize the promising potential of life sciences and biotechnology- considered the next frontier technologies with profound impacts to knowledge based economy, by building the capacity to translate lab-scale life science discoveries to large scale new products and processes to match the human needs for health, nutrition and wellbeing.

Solute carriers (SLCs) are the largest family of membrane transporters encoded in the human genome and their role in trafficking nutrients, ions, vitamins and cofactors is vital for maintaining homeostasis in individual cells, organs and tissues. Their misfunction is associated with a variety of diseases and a small number of individual SLCs are successful drug targets. Despite their importance, SLCs remain understudied and a surprisingly large proportion is deemed “orphan” in terms of transport function. The ongoing RESOLUTE IMI consortium is working on the systematic de-orphanization of SLCs and is highly successful in creating open-access tools, high-throughput assays and omics data. This effort is focused on basic aspects of SLC biochemistry and biology and was not meant to include the medical dimension. In the REsolution program we propose here, we exploit the unique opportunity to now link the RESOLUTE knowledge to physiology and disease through human genetics. The goal is to maximize the chances that SLC transporters will become successful drug targets and use the growing amount of data becoming available on genetic variations and disease association to assign pathophysiological relevance to individual transporters. Concretely, we plan to: 1) assemble human SLC genetic information and annotate within the RESOLUTE knowledgebase; 2) study the structure-activity relationship for selected SLC variants, 3) use deep mutagenesis and artificial intelligence to develop the equivalent of a “Rosetta stone” allowing the interpretation of SLC genetic variation. This will allow us to not only contextualize SLCs, as elucidated by RESOLUTE, in the current human medical genetics landscape, but also to create an SLC prioritization rationale and a resource of the whole SLC family for the pharmaceutical industry valid for years to come.

The objective of the HELoS CSA is to support the Health.E Lighthouse Initiative Advisory Service (LIASE) in its ambition to accelerate innovation in medical devices (“Moore for Medical”). Health.E will accelerate the innovation in medical devices and systems by stimulating the development of open technology platforms and standards , thereby moving away from the inflexible and costly point solutions that presently dominate electronic medical device manufacturing. Open technology platforms, supported by roadmaps, will generate the production volumes needed for sustained technology development, resulting in new and better solutions in the healthcare domain. Health.E will: • Translate the needs of medtech and pharma into ECS opportunities; • Build on the ECS Strategic Research Agenda and identify the gaps; • Stimulate initiatives: towards open technology platforms and standards for medical devices; to anticipate the requirements for regulatory, Notified Bodies, clinical trials and market access; to better apply to the current care practices, necessary conditions for market access. • Connect to European initiatives and relevant communities including PPPs such as ECSEL, IMI, Eureka, and relevant industry associations In the HELoS CSA, three main components are identified that need to be connected in order to address the complex issue of innovation in the medical industry: • Connecting existing networks: ECSEL projects, (inter)national and regional projects and initiatives; • Addressing and connecting scientific/technical issues and non-technical aspects e.g. legal, regulatory, standardization, ethical, economic (cross-cutting issues); • Extending the network of stakeholders and markets across Europe (spreading excellence, facilitating international collaboration, new applications); • The dissemination of the results of this initiative to the stakeholders and the general public.

Isocitrate dehydrogenase wildtype (IDHwt) glioblastoma (GBM) is the most frequent, aggressive and lethal brain tumour. It has a universally fatal prognosis with 85% of patients dying within two years. Effective precision medicine therapies are thus urgently required. This can only be achieved by focused multi-sectoral collaborations in innovative research disciplines. Overall, GLIORESOLVE will exploit the intractability of GBM to address European applied biomedical research training needs and will train 10 innovative, entrepreneurial doctoral researchers (DRs). The research objectives of GLIORESOLVE are i) to extend immunotherapy options to IDHwt GBM patients and identify novel tumour microenvironment (TME) subtype-specific therapeutic targets, (ii) develop and optimise state of the art pre-clinical models that recapitulate GBM TME-subtypes and (iii) test novel rationally selected (available) drugs / drug combinations for precision treatment of IDHwt GBM based on TME subtype assignment. Cumulatively, the programme seeks to generate sufficient data to support a post-project Phase 2 clinical trial. The consortium brings together leading European academics, clinicians, private sector and not-for-profit partners, and incorporates disruptive research methods including multi-omics, ex-vivo ‘tumour-on-a-chip’ assay development, computational modelling and systems biology. Overall GLIORESOLVE provides a comprehensive translational research strategy that goes significantly beyond the current state-of-the-art in neuro-oncology, to establish a new TME-targeting precision medicine platform for this incurable disease. The GLIORESOLVE network addresses current needs in academia and the private sector to train doctoral researchers in an environment that spans multiple disciplines. Thus, GLIORESOLVE DRs will be able to navigate confidently between clinical, academic and private sector environments to progress applied research findings towards improved patient outcomes.