The EU-CiP project works closely aligned with other European Cancer projects like CANDLE and UNCAN-CONNECT. Together, these and many other projects are part of the EU’s overarching strategy to address all aspects of Cancer (Research, diagnostics, care and more).
CANDLE – National CAncer data Node DeveLopErs
CANDLE is a three-year EU-funded project (2025 – 2028) supporting Member States and Associated Countries in setting up National Cancer Data Nodes. These NCDNs will boost the reuse of cancer data for research, innovation and policy making, in order to improve diagnostics and treatment for cancer patients, as well as prevention and early detection for citizens not yet affected by the disease. Kickstarted by the implementation of the European Health Data Space, and building on national collaborative networks, NCDNs will provide researchers improved and cross border access to larger data sets of better quality.
Read more about the CANDLE project here.
UNCAN-Connect
The UNCAN-Connect project (2025-2030) will create a decentralised collaborative network for advancing cancer research and innovation. This infrastructure for federated query and analysis will allow cancer researchers and clinicians to identify new biomarkers, stratify patient groups, and design better-targeted therapies by analyzing data patterns on a large scale.
The project will use six use cases, focussed on understanding cancer initiation and progression: a) paediatric tumours, b) lymphoid malignancies, c) pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, d) ovarian cancer, e) lung cancer, and f) prostate cancer. Each use case will support the development of tools and services for working with FAIR data.
UNCAN-Connect’s main result will be the UNCAN.eu platform, providing various resources such as distributed tools for data access and analysis, a synthetic data generation pipeline, an implementation handbook and recommendations.
CANDLE fundamentally links to UNCAN-Connect since the National Cancer Data Nodes will connect to the UNCAN.eu platform. This provides an essential connection between the Member State and European level, to account for national complexities and differences.
Read more about the UNCAN-Connect project here.
EU-CiP
EU-CIP (2025-2028) will build the European Cancer Information Portal, as part of the European Cancer Patient Digital Centre. It will develop a process to build the EU-CIP Library of Content to be used by Cancer Information Portals to help cancer patients, survivors, and their families on the whole patient journey.
With this, it builds a central part of the European Cancer Patient Digital Centre – an initiative by the EU Mission on Cancer Implementation plan to help cancer patients and survivors access reliable information on cancer.
For the Cancer Information Portal, EU-CIP will set up both the technical platform and the content editorial process. Patients will be involved throughout the entire process design, content creation, and review. The overall goal is to create a portal that is valuable from both the user and operator perspectives.
EU-CIP will synergise existing efforts and focus on national particularities. A strong collaboration with CANDLE will ensure a link to the National Cancer Data Nodes and the Member State perspective. CANDLE, in turn, will benefit from perspectives from a lay patient audience – especially from its stakeholder engagement.
Background
The European Commission established UNCAN.eu (Understanding Cancer) and the European Cancer Patient Digital Centre (ECPDC) as key initiatives to address the urgent and growing challenge of cancer across Europe. With cancer projected to become the leading cause of death in the EU by 2035, there is a critical need to accelerate research, improve prevention and early detection, personalize treatment, and enhance the quality of life for patients and survivors. The network of National Cancer Data Nodes (NCDNs) is part of UNCAN.eu. It has been launched to build a federated, EU-wide research infrastructure that enables the sharing and analysis of diverse cancer-related data—ranging from genomics and imaging to clinical and real-world data—across Member States. It aims to foster and support high-quality, efficient and practice-changing clinical research. The development of the UNCAN.eu platform is guided by use cases and will build on existing research infrastructures and initiatives. Current use cases involve six types of cancer: pediatric, lymphoid, lung, ovarian, pancreatic, and prostate; NCDNs and the central UNCAN.eu platform are implemented in full alignment with the primary and secondary use of health data under EHDS.
Complementing this, the ECPDC focuses on delivering evidence-based information to empower cancer patients and survivors through an information portal. This enables them to better understand their situation and make informed, shared decisions with healthcare professionals about available options throughout their cancer journey, thereby enhancing their quality of life. Additionally, ECPDC will be linked with EHDS infrastructures for the primary use of health data, as appropriate and provide patients and survivors with tools and EU level guidance for personal self-data collection, access and sharing. Together, UNCAN.eu and ECPDC contribute to the objectives of the EU Mission on Cancer, Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, and the forthcoming European Health Data Space (EHDS).
NCDNs (i.e. UNCAN.eu) help the data holders and users to: improve data quality of cancer data at source; ensure all cancer datasets have a metadata record in the EU dataset catalogue; develop common dataset variables for cancer datasets; provide tools for cancer data analysis to be used in secure processing environments (SPEs). ECPDC is intended to: provide a patient information portal; provide a platform for exchange with peers and experts; provide guidance for PROMs and PREMs data reporting and sharing.
Use cases for the two platforms are requested to closely work with associated NCDNs on the member state level as well as with the central UNCAN.eu and ECPDC hubs at the EU level. Use cases concerning the utilisation of patient information portal, are requested to collaborate with the ECPDC EU platform, their national mirror sites or the relevant NCDNs, where applicable.