Catalonia is leading PRECISEU, a European macro-project to promote personalized medicine and advanced therapies

Today the acting president of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, presented Catalonia's leadership in the Europe-wide PRECISEU project (which stands for Personalised Medicine Empowerment Connecting Innovation Ecosystems Across Europe). It is an ambitious initiative to promote personalized medicine and advanced therapies in Europe.

This initiative was chosen as one of the 5 winning projects in the competitive Regional Innovation Valleys (RIV) call of European innovation ecosystems, for which the European Commission has allocated a total of €54 M, and the only one in this field.

The PRECISEU project in particular has a budget of almost €23 M for the next five years. Half of it is coming from the European Commission, and the other half from the budgets of the European regions participating in it: 25 partners from 12 regions in 10 member states (Spain, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece) and one country associated with the Horizon Europe program (Ukraine).

Catalonia is the region with the most partners participating in this project, which is coordinated by Biocat (the organization that promotes the health innovation ecosystem in Catalonia). Biocat is joined by the Department of Health, ACCIÓ (Agency for Business Competitiveness), the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and AstraZeneca, a company which recently moved to Catalonia.

The acting president, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, said that projects like this are "the best example of why investing in science is the best way to improve people's lives", since "science, however much it may be, is a tool at the service of people. "

The captain of the Executive has celebrated that Catalonia is leading a pioneering project worldwide "that will contribute to decisively accelerate the implementation of personalized medicine at European level "and believes that the future of medicine is in "the adaptation of treatments to each person, tailored to our needs," he reaffirmed.

Aragonès referred to the European commitment affirming that "Catalonia aspires to be able to contribute to face the great global challenges with all the peoples and nations of Europe" and for this reason, PRECISEU allows "joining forces and working together with other European peoples and nations".

The President of the Generalitat assured that the PRECISEU project "is the result of the commitment to science and research" and thanked the European Commission for "the commitment and trust it has shown in the entire ecosystem of knowledge in Catalonia".

The leadership of this project means that, according to Aragonès, Catalonia is consolidating "as one of the hubs of reference in health innovation on the European continent" and he listed the entire ecosystem that the country already has around the health sciences, such as the Marenostrum 5 supercomputer or the new National Center for Advanced Therapies. Marenostrum 5 or the new National Center for Advanced Therapies, research centers and groups with a high level of excellence, or the more than 1400 companies dedicated to innovation in health.

The president closed his speech by thanking all those who have made it possible "to place Catalonia at the forefront of research and science of life and health and make it possible for us to lead a European project as important as PRECISEU", stating that "PRECISEU is an important European project". 

The Catalan Minister of Health, Manel Balcells i Díaz, said that the Government of Catalonia has firmly positioned itself as "one of the main centers of healthcare innovation in Europe. It has made a strong commitment to research and innovation, with advanced therapies, and the Department of Health plays a particularly important role due to its important influence and transforming capacity". He added that the PRECISEU project "will position Catalonia as one of the most representative health innovation ecosystems in Europe".

Minister Balcells stressed that innovation is a "strategic driver to advance in the transformation of the healthcare sector. Promoting and facilitating access to high-value healthcare innovation can make a significant contribution to improving the health status and quality of life of patients, benefiting both the Catalan healthcare system and the patients themselves" .

PRECISEU Project

The goal of PRECISEU is to accelerate the adoption of personalized medicine in Europe, to facilitate the sustainable digital transformation of health systems and to support the development of highly innovative products based on advanced therapies and health data.

The project's almost 23 million euros have been equally divided into two clear areas:

• Almost 11.5 million euros will be spent on financing four innovative projects related to health data and advanced therapies. To choose the winning projects, an expert group will be appointed to serve as a selection committee following the same criteria as the Horizon Europe program. This action aims to finance between 25 and 50 European companies and organizations, depending on the size of the interregional consortia. Each will receive almost 3 million euros.
   
• The other 11.5 million euros will be earmarked for implementing strategic actions to prepare the new health system, provide patients with access to innovation, analyze market needs, establish collaboration platforms, and implement the training programs which are essential to improve health and innovation Europe-wide.

PRECISEU has begun in July 2024 and will last until 30 June 2029. This week, the first meeting was held in Barcelona, with 50 attendees representing the 25 consortium partners; the mission of the gathering was to finish up defining and agreeing on all the activities included in the project’s nine working packages. The agenda of this internal meeting included the public presentation of the project, which was held today at the Palau de la Generalitat and brought together authorities, more than 100 professionals in the sector and representatives of the PRECISEU partners, signaling the start of one of the most ambitious European projects in this field.

A project focused on improving citizens’ health

The mission of PRECISEU is to work towards more preventive, predictive, personalized, participatory and patient-centered health care. Through the interconnection of European innovation ecosystems, the project seeks to transfer practices and solutions among regions, especially in the fields of advanced therapies and the use of health data to improve the quality of medical care and accelerate health research and innovation.

To achieve this, by harnessing the joint expertise and capacities of the project participants, a wide range of activities will be held around:

• Connecting scientific infrastructures to improve sharing.
• The quality and interoperability of health data among regions.
• having a European market analysis from different perspectives and giving patients access to personalized medicine in Europe.
• Promoting the use of health data to generate personalized products and services.
• Lowering the wait time to access advanced therapies in the market.
• New training programs will be created and health care professionals’ skills in advanced therapies and digitalization will be improved.
• Emphasis will be placed on the need for a major culture change to open up the perspectives of public managers, regulators, and decision-makers to innovation and its inclusion in health systems.
• A demanding Innovation Support Program will be rolled out, which will fund and choose 4 competitive projects that will enable innovative products in advanced therapies, medical devices, digital health and the like to reach the market more quickly.

Catalonia's leadership in advanced therapies

With its robust health innovation ecosystem, Catalonia is playing a key role in this project. The region is well-positioned to lead this initiative, which promotes personalized medicine as an effective response to today's global challenges, especially after the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If we take a look at personalized medicine and specifically advanced therapies, an array of figures confirm Catalonia's clout and impact in this field. The region leads the national ranking in scientific publications (2,195 or 38% of the total), and in both Europe and the world, Catalonia is a benchmark in participating in clinical trials for advanced therapies, ranked fifth in Europe and eighth in the world. It has also received more funding (64% of the total) than any other Spanish autonomous community in the CERTERA call, demonstrating Catalonia’s leadership in developing advanced therapies in Spain, and it leads the European fundraising programs for personalized medicine. Catalonia is also at the forefront of Europe in digitalization of the health system.

Catalonia, named one of the ‘Regional Innovation Valleys’ in Europe

As part of the PRECISEU project, the European Commission has named Catalonia a Regional Innovation Valley. All around Europe, a total of 151 regions have been recognized and are participating in the 15 projects, 5 of them through the Regional Innovation Valleys (RIV) call and 10 through the Interregional Innovation Investments Instrument (I3) of the European Regional Development Fund.

The European Union will earmark 116 million euros to this initiative (54 million euros for the 5 RIV projects and 62 million euros for the 10 I3 projects) funded by the European Innovation Ecosystems program of Horizon Europe and the Interregional Innovation Investments Instrument (I3) of the European Regional Development Fund.