Despite continuous and significant advances in the understanding, prevention, diagnostics and treatment, cancer remains a worldwide health burden and a major public health challenge.
Translational cancer research plays a key role in understanding the complex aspects of the disease(s) and addressing answers to reduce incidence and mortality of malignancies and to improve the quality of life of cancer patients.
The great potential of translational cancer research in Europe and beyond will only be achieved with a coordinated effort between public and private organisations that provide funds for research, researchers, healthcare providers and all those engaged in the cancer research spectrum.
In this context, the TRANSCAN-3 network, with a strong background in funding cancer research, embodies an
excellent model of cross-national cooperation by bringing together 31 funding organisations, from 20 countries,
with the common goal of supporting high-impact translational cancer research through cross-national joint calls for proposals, and by an efficient investment of dedicated national/regional public funding, leveraged with foundation/charity-based resources and EU financial support.
Most of the partners were participants in the previous TRANSCAN and TRANSCAN-2 projects, therefore the network had already established a model of transnational cooperation encouraging high quality research through competitive funding, as exemplified by the successful implementation of 7 joint transnational calls in the past years.
Building up on the well-established cooperation and accomplishments, through an efficient use of dedicated national resources and the harmonisation of national/regional funding mechanisms and programmes TRANSCAN-3 aims at becoming a catalysts for a sustainable model of funding of high-impact cancer research in Europe and beyond, with an approach to effectively engage relevant stakeholders (patients, society as a whole, policy makers, etc.) in different stages of the action.
The main objectives of TRANSCAN-3 are:
• To launch and implement, in the first year of the project, an EU co-funded call for proposals on translational cancer research with a wide-ranging participation of public and private funders from countries and regions across Europe and beyond
• To launch at least three additional joint calls, without EU co-funding, on the second, third and fourth year of the project
• to improve collaboration between research funders in order to identify critical funding gaps to support research projects with potential to deliver better outcomes that can make significant difference to cancer incidence, mortality and quality of life of cancer patients
• To implement connected activities which are related to the follow-up of funded research projects, their regular monitoring and dissemination of their results
• To set-up and guarantee a communication strategy, addressed to all societal stakeholders
• To implement strategies on identifying research and innovation priorities, on interacting with relevant European and global stakeholders, on sustainability of the network and on strengthening the involvement of patients and the support for early-career scientists.
