World Cancer Day 2026: EU-funded projects advancing personalised cancer medicine

World Cancer Day is an occasion to raise awareness about cancer and encourage prevention, early detection and treatment. With 2.7 million new cases every year and as one of the leading causes of death and morbidity in the European Union, cancer is one of the EU’s top health priorities. Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the EU Cancer Mission aim to tackle the entire disease pathway of cancer - from prevention to quality of life of cancer patients and survivors.

The theme for World Cancer Day, “united by unique,” stresses the importance of placing patients at the centre of care. In line with this, we spotlight a selection of EU4Health, Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 projects managed by HaDEA that focus on personalised cancer medicine (PCM) - an approach where prevention, diagnosis and treatment are tailored to the unique needs of each individual, based on their personal medical history, genetic information and cutting-edge technologies to optimise interventions. 

The benefits of PCM include not only tailored treatment, but also the reduction of side effects, an improved quality of life and better outcomes.  

Building the EU Cancer and public health genomics platform 

Cancer is strongly driven by genomic modifications, and a broad analysis of these modifications with new technological approaches has become a major asset for early diagnosis, expected outcomes and personalised medicine and care.

The CAN.HEAL project, funded under the EU4Health programme and concluded in April 2025, has contributed to Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the EU Cancer Mission by advancing the integration of genomics into public health and clinical care, supporting a more personalised, equitable approach to cancer prevention and treatment across Europe.

The project has enabled EU cancer centres to:

• Harmonise data interpretation in patient care;
• Help assess a person’s risk of cancer by adopting molecular tumour profiling biomarkers. 

In addition, CAN.HEAL has produced policy recommendations to improve access to genetic counselling across the EU and aligned efforts with the Genome of Europe initiative, issuing recommendations for implementing early detection using next-generation sequencing (NGS) and liquid biopsy technologies.

To support continued dissemination of its results, the consortium has published a comprehensive leaflet summarising CAN.HEAL’s objectives, structure, recommendations and key outcomes, including:

• Ethical and legal guidance for genomic data reuse in line with GDPR;
• Education and public awareness materials supporting capacity-building in oncogenomics.

Enhancing personalised cancer medicine for all EU citizens 

The success of PCM depends on access to adequate molecular diagnostics, clinical decision support systems and clinical trials. The recently concluded PCM4EU project, funded under EU4Health, has worked to address existing challenges associated with the broad implementation of PCM trials across Europe. 

With the aim of improving survival rates and the quality of life of cancer patients, the project has evaluated the current standards in molecular diagnostics and provided guidelines and recommendations on the implementation and interpretation of molecular and clinical data, using clinical decision support systems. 

Among its key outcomes, the project has:

• Performed a comprehensive assessment of the existing landscape of personalised cancer medicine in the EU;
• Compared, in a white paper, the performance of molecular assays used in standard-of-care to identify patients suitable for personalised oncology trials, including defining a minimum set of parameters for state-of-the-art analysis;
• Established a framework to expand clinical trials in Europe and enable cross-border data pooling and sharing;
• Provided recommendations on the successful implementation of equitable access to PCM, including cross-border access to clinical trials within the EU;
• Built a comprehensive portfolio of materials for various audiences and in different languages, including informative videos, podcast series, webinars and hybrid courses, as well as virtual molecular tumor boards, which can be found on the project webpage and on its YouTube channel.

The outcomes of the CAN.HEAL and PCM4EU initiatives have played a key role in driving the launch of the new Joint Action on Personalised Cancer Medicine (JA PCM), which officially started in November 2025. These advancements are also set to support the SPARC project, designed to work in close collaboration with the Joint Action.

Personalised prevention, medicine, follow-up and tertiary prevention

The primary aim of Joint Action (JA) PCM is to extend access to and knowledge of PCM across Europe with a view to developing healthcare interventions along the person’s life course, considering a holistic approach that includes healthy individuals, cancer patients and survivors. The JA PCM gathers more than 140 organisations from 29 countries and is funded under EU4Health.

The Joint Action will therefore focus on three areas - personalised prevention, personalised medicine and personalised follow-up and tertiary prevention, working towards:

• Developing training for professionals and informative materials for patients and citizens;
• Generating ethical, legal and societal implications’ tools, prioritising patient-centred approaches;
• Creating a data infrastructure to offer a health technology assessment (HTA) framework for PCM;
• Developing a PCM evaluation framework addressing equity, impact, adoption and scalability;
• Formulating policy recommendations on sustainable implementation of PCM in the EU.

Enhancing cross-border collaboration 
The SPARC initiative aligns with JA PCM to complement EU countries’ strategies and ensure a unified approach to advance personalised cancer medicine across Europe. Concretely, the initiative is:

• Integrating cutting-edge technologies such as Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and AI-driven decision-support tools;
• Standardising protocols and harmonising data to enable cross-border collaboration;
• Providing training and certification for healthcare professionals;
• Engaging with patients;
• Developing healthcare policies and regulatory frameworks to support the implementation of personalised cancer medicine. 

Improved diagnostics and survival for all children with acute myeloid leukemia 

Currently, not all children in Europe have access to the same level of diagnostic precision or modern treatments. The EU4Health project CHIP-AML22 aims to improve the diagnosis and treatment of paediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a rare but aggressive blood cancer. 

The project supports the clinical implementation of next-generation sequencing (NGS), advanced  minimal residual disease (MRD) monitoring and targeted therapies, which are essential for personalised medicine. The infrastructure and protocols developed through CHIP-AML22 can serve as a model for other rare diseases and cancer types. 

Its findings can provide valuable insights for wider groups of patients, including those with adult AML. Since its launch in late 2022, the project has involved 100 paediatric AML patients, expanded trial coverage across 12 EU countries and established a well-functioning, evolving patient registry.

Improving personalised cancer medicine through data-driven cancer genome interpretation

CGI-Clinics is a project funded under Horizon Europe ‘Health’ that aims to improve personalised cancer medicine by enhancing genomic data interpretation. In practice, the project delivers the CGI-Clinics tool, which combines expert databases and data-driven methods to assess mutations driving cancer and identify biomarkers of treatment response. The final goal is to identify treatment options tailored for each patient. 

The project seeks to engage and empower patients to understand their molecular profiling as well as encourage them to participate in the data-sharing process to benefit future patients. As a result of sharing data, scientists can train and improve the CGI-Clinics tool to interpret cancer mutations that are currently unknown. With the same technology, new and more effective drugs can be developed, ultimately leading to improved cancer precision medicine. 

Improving personalised cancer medicine through organ-on-chip technology

The lymphatic system is a key part of the adaptive immune system. In many cases, tumours use lymphatic vessels to spread to lymph nodes. The Tumor-Lymph Node-on-Chip (Tumor-LN-oC) project has developed a tumor-lympth node-on-chip platform to model interactions between primary tumours and lympth nodes from the same lung cancer patient, serving as a “biological twin”.

The project’s platform has been validated with real patient samples, helping doctors test treatments on a patient’s own cancer cells. As a result, Tumor-LN-oC, which was funded under the Horizon 2020 programme, has contributed to improving our understanding of how cancer spreads, reducing reliance on animal testing and speeding up the development of personalised cancer threrapies.

Background   

EU4Health is the fourth and largest of the EU health programmes. The EU4Health programme goes beyond an ambitious response to the COVID-19 crisis to address the resilience of European healthcare systems. The programme provides funding to national authorities, health organisations and other bodies through grants and public procurement, contributing to a healthier Europe.  

Horizon Europe is the research and innovation programme of the EU for the period 2021-2027. The aims of Cluster 1 ‘Health’ include improving and protecting the health and well-being of citizens of all ages by generating new knowledge, developing innovative solutions and integrating where relevant a gender perspective to prevent, diagnose, monitor, treat and cure diseases. Horizon 2020 (H2020) was the EU’s multiannual funding programme between 2014 and 2020. 

Relevant links

Factsheet – Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan: Making a difference - Public Health