European Week Against Cancer 2025: EU-funded projects contributing to effective diagnosis and treatment

Led by the Association of European Cancer Leagues (ECL), the European Week Against Cancer takes place annually between 25 and 31 May and aims to raise awareness of cancer prevention, early detection, access to treatment and support for cancer patients and people with a history of cancer.

Despite significant progress in cancer therapy, there is still a long road ahead in order to improve disparities among EU countries when it comes to cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment.

Discover EU-funded projects that are tackling this challenge and contributing to ensuring that cancer patients across the EU have the same access to high quality care, diagnosis and treatment, regardless of where they live.

EU4Health

The i-Violin project has successfully developed tools, such as the automatic CT image quality calculator, to enable a standardised approach to optimising oncological imaging, specifically with computed tomography (CT). As a result, i-Violin has allowed the medical community to optimise and harmonise oncological CT imaging for the chest, pelvis and abdomen. The project has also underscored the importance of well-trained and educated staff from various disciplines, including radiologists, radiographers and medical physicists, who need to collaborate closely to facilitate effective optimisation. A webinar series allowing stakeholders to explore the usability of the tools developed by the project is available online.

Joint Action (JA) CraNE has laid the groundwork for the establishment of the European Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCCs), a flagship initiative within Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. With the goals of improving access to high-quality cancer care and reducing inequalities across Europe, CraNE has developed a Maturity Model (a self-assessment and capacity-building tool for future CCCs), as well as a set of standards and quality improvement pathways for individual CCCs, as well as for Comprehensive Cancer Care Networks (CCCNs). The ongoing JA EUnetCCC , building on the outcomes of CraNE is focusing on the next steps in this process: making the European Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centres a reality.

The Joint Action JANE carried out the preparatory work, paving the way for the establishment of seven European Networks of Expertise (NoEs) on important areas in cancer that will benefit from cross border collaboration. After two years of implementation, JANE has defined the objectives, scope and challenges of the NoEs in cancer and their synergies and interrelation with other European health networks. The NoEs cover the following crucial areas in oncology: 

• Complex and poor-prognosis cancers;
• Palliative care;
• Survivorship;
• Personalised primary and secondary prevention;
• Omics technologies;
• Hi-tech medical resources;
• Adolescents and young adults with cancer.

The four-year Joint Action JANE-2  is now building on JANE’s outcomes and achievements, to operationalise the networks, connecting experts and exchanging knowledge across Europe.

With the objective of facilitating delivery of higher quality cancer care, the project BEACON has mapped the capacities of cancer centres in the EU, gathering  information from existing sources: cancer facilities, cancer registries, electronic health record databases. It has collected information about the needs of  four target groups – patients, healthcare providers, researchers, policymakers – and created a platform and an application that provides data about cancer centres to each of them.

The CAN.HEAL project (Building the EU Cancer and Health Genomics Platform), with 17 countries participating, focused on two of the Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan’s initiatives: ‘Cancer Diagnostics and Treatment for All’ and ‘Genomics for Public Health’. It has set up a framework for integrating the Genome of Europe biobanking initiative in public health genomics for cancer.

The project underlined that prevention, diagnosis and treatment should be approached in a concerted way for optimal benefit of patients and citizens. With a focus on applying ‘next generation sequencing’ technology and identifying implementation paths, CAN.HEAL has shared data among EU Cancer Centres which would improve equity in treatment and allowed better counselling regarding cancer risk using molecular tumour profiling biomarkers. 

Among its key achievements, CAN.HEAL has provided recommendations for harmonising Molecular Tumour Boards (MTBs), developed EU-wide Oncology Decision Support Tools (EU-oncDST), as well as liquid biopsy, and enabled training and evaluation strategies to support capacity-building across EU countries.

Horizon 2020

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men in Europe and the third deadliest. Current methods often lead to unnecessary diagnoses and treatments. 

The ProCAncer-I project is using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve how prostate cancer is diagnosed, monitored and treated. The project has developed the ProCAncer-I Platform for management of large-scale MRI data. By the end of 2023, it has gathered a huge and diverse set of prostate cancer MRI scans encompassing over 11 000 patients and 6.7 million images from different sources. ProCAncer-I also created ‘AI passport’ workflows – processes making sure that AI tools adhere to standards such as fairness, accuracy and usefulness.

Relevant links

Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan

European Week Against Cancer

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. HaDEA manages the vast majority of the total EU4Health budget and implements the programme by managing calls for proposals and calls for tenders.    

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.