Understanding the effects of environmental exposure on the risk of paediatric, adolescent and young adult cancers - Cancer Mission

HaDEA has published the Cancer Mission call Supporting the implementation of the Cancer Mission (HORIZON-MISS-2025-02).

The topic HORIZON-MISS-2025-02-CANCER-02 contributes to the Cancer Mission objectives by improving the understanding of the impact of environmental exposures, including their interaction with other relevant factors on cancer onset and progression and/or other relevant health outcomes along the cancer patient journey. The age group of interest for this topic includes children, adolescents and young adults (less than 40 years of age at first cancer diagnosis).

The applicants should address several of the following activities:

• Identify, validate and document different types (and/or combinations) of biomarkers for the development of robust quantitative measures of the effects of cumulative environmental exposures associated with cancer onset;
• Elaborate and test cost effective approaches for measuring biomarkers of cumulative environmental exposure in large paediatric, adolescent and young adult populations, also by applying new analytical tools and novel methods of analysis;
• Identify individual signatures (e.g. based on genetic, epigenetic, multi-omic characteristics), and time windows conferring susceptibility to environmental hazards associated with cancer onset and progression in children, adolescent and young adults at different stages of the life course;
• Identify clinical states, lifestyle and socio-economic factors and circumstances that increase the risk of adverse health outcomes associated with exposure to environmental hazards in different time windows in young cancer patients;
• Develop new tools and methods to combine and analyse multimodal data, including the application of novel data-intensive methods of analysis, while ensuring interoperability with the future UNCAN.eu research platform and taking advantage of current European research infrastructures.

Interested parties can find more information and apply on the Funding and Tenders Portal.