Innovative Health Initiative (IHI)

• The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI), a new European partnership for health under Horizon Europe that builds on the successes of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), is a public-private partnership (PPP) between the European Union and the European life science industries involved in healthcare. IHI will enable the cross-sectoral integration of technologies, know-how, products, services and workfl ows to prevent, intercept, diagnose, treat and manage diseases.
• Horizon Europe has introduced the novelty of missions, with cancer being one of the five mission areas. IHI will play an
  important role in supporting the development of innovations to prevent, faster diagnose and treat cancer and thus significantly contribute to the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the cancer mission. The Plan will address cancer in a holistic way through
  four pillars:
  1.prevention;
  2.early detection;
  3.diagnosis and treatment;
  4.quality of life of cancer patients and survivors.

• The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) is funded jointly by the European Union (represented by the European Commission) and the life science industries (represented by COCIR, EFPIA / Vaccines Europe, EuropaBio, MedTech Europe).
• The total budget for IHI for the period 2021-2027 is EUR 2.4 billion among which EUR 1.2 billion provided by the European Union (from the Horizon Europe Health Cluster).
• This funding will support cross-sectoral projects, including projects focused on cancer, that bring together health industries as well as universities, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), patients, regulators and others.
• Any organisation established in the European Union or a country associated to Horizon Europe is eligible to receive IHI funding. In practice, IHI funding primarily supports the participation in its projects of organisations like universities, research organisations, patient organisations, SMEs and mid-sized companies. More details will be spelt out in the call texts.
• In the context of a Public-Private Partnership, IHI health industry partners and contributing partners will bring their own contribution to IHI programme with respectively EUR 1 billion and EUR 200 million, primarily through ‘in-kind’ contributions (e.g. their researchers’ time, laboratories, data, compounds) or cash contributions. At least 45% of each project’s budget has to come from industry partner / contributing partner contributions.

THE IHI/IMI ONCOLOGY PORTFOLIO IS COMPOSED OF 14 PROJECTS FOR A TOTAL BUDGET OF EUR 250 MILLION COVERS THE WHOLE SPECTRUM OF MEDICAL RESEARCH AND DRUG DEVELOPMENT.

CLOSED PROJECTS:

• QuIC ConCePT developed PET and MRI imaging biomarkers to assess cancer therapy efficacy earlier Over 50 publications on the relationship between imaging and underlying biology, standard protocols, and an imaging biomarker roadmap for cancer studies.
• Predect developed complex, reproducible, and robust models (qualified as “game changer” in 2016 Cancer Cell publication) that more closely mimic the cellular organisation of tumours, e.g.: three-dimensions, cellular heterogeneity.
• OncoTrack developed and assessed novel approaches for identification of new markers for colon cancer with molecular analysis of Complete Patients’ Genome, molecular classifiers for drug response and biological models.
• CANCER ID developed and evaluated technologies for blood-based biomarker analysis such as CTCs, ctDNA and cfmiRNAs for tumour liquid biopsy.

ONGOING PROJECTS:

• ITCC-P4 address a significant preclinical gap in identifying promising molecules to fight paediatric cancer by developing a new proof of concept platform to accelerate science-driven drug development.
• HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS are building a high-quality Big Data platform on hematological malignancies to improve the treatment of blood cancers.
• PIONEER is building a high-quality Big Data platform to improve the treatment of prostate cancers.
• IMMUcan creates an unprecedented, open-access, royalty-free database with clinical, molecular and cellular data of the tumour and its microenvironment from 3000 cancer patients to identify new treatment strategies and predictive biomarkers.
• T2EVOLVE supports the development of engineered T-cell therapies such as CAR T cells for treating blood cancers and solid tumours.
• SISAQOL is setting international standards in analyzing patient reported outcomes and quality of life endpoints in cancer clinical trials.
• PERIST SEQ works on tumour plasticity to characterize the biology of drug tolerant persister cells to better understand tumour resistance to drugs in cancer & identify novel drug targets to overcome treatment resistance.
• PROTECT-trial runs a clinical trial to compare proton therapy versus conventional radiotherapy for patients with oesophagus cancer whose treatment also includes chemotherapy and surgery.
• OPTIMA uses the power of artificial intelligence to advance treatments and facilitate decision-making for physicians and patients with prostate, breast and lung cancer.

https://www.ihi.europa.eu/news-events/events/ihi-joins-european-cancer-meeting-2022