Romania gets first R&D Teaming grant as past winners weigh in on impact

Romania has won its first fully-funded Teaming for Excellence project, a significant grant with a contribution of up to €15 million from the EU, as it aims to create a new centre for liquid biopsy research. It is one of the last eligible countries in the EU to win this type of grant.

It is the second-last eligible country in the EU to win this type of grant, with Malta now the only country without a Teaming project. 

Teaming is the largest grant given under Horizon Europe’s Widening measures, which are in place to support countries with lagging R&D ecosystems. The grant funds the creation or modernisation of centres of excellence, through close links to leading research institutions.

Romania’s winning project is coordinated by the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Carol Davila (UMPCD) in Bucharest, with partners in the Netherlands, Germany, and the US. 

“I see this project as a major step in strengthening our academic and research capacity and translating results into clinical practice, a long-term platform for excellence,” said UMPCD rector Viorel Jinga. 

In 2017, a Romanian project received Teaming funding for a phase one study, but it did not progress to the phase two development stage. 

Liquid biopsy is a test to diagnose or analyse potentially cancerous tumours using just a liquid sample, usually blood or urine. It is a relatively new and fast-developing science, and has several advantages compared to tissue biopsies, which are commonly used today. 

Liquid biopsies are easier to perform, are virtually non-invasive, and can be used for continuous monitoring of tumours as they progress. They are also more suited to early screening of cancer or other diseases. 

The planned Romanian centre, called Excely, will focus on the use of liquid biopsies for noncommunicable diseases, especially cancer and cardiovascular diseases, and will be the first centre in the region to bring together research, diagnostics, clinical studies, bioinformatics and genomic data in one place. 

The centre could have major benefits for the local and regional population and businesses, according to Jinga. “In this way, UMPCD will begin to assume a central lighthouse role in the central and eastern European region for liquid biopsy,” he said.

Teaming’s broad popularity

Teaming has proven to be a popular instrument since it was first introduced in 2014, along with other Widening measures in the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. Over 100 projects have been financed so far, with 52 funded for the two phases. 

In the latest Teaming call, 61 proposals were submitted, with 43 deemed to be above the threshold for funding. Due to budget limits, just 19 were supported in the end, with a total EU contribution of €270 million. 

Portugal, Cyprus and Poland all currently have seven projects. In the latest call, Portugal won a further six, and Poland three. 

Aistė Vilkanauskytė, a technology and innovation adviser to the Lithuanian government, said Teaming is well appreciated by institutions and researchers. 

“I talked to our two institutions that are now implementing Teaming projects and they are very happy with it,” she said. “They say Teaming helps to make things move much faster by working with international partners, enabling developments in five years that otherwise would have taken ten or 15.”

The advantages extend beyond that, she said. “They also have staff and student exchanges and are developing PhD programmes. At an institutional level, it is really positive.”

Cyprus has particularly benefited from Teaming. The instrument has helped fund seven centres of excellence, a significant amount given the size of the country and the population. 

“Teaming grants have had a transformational effect on Cyprus’ research and innovation landscape during the last decade,” said a source at Cyprus’ Research and Innovation Foundation. 

“They also contributed to a visible maturation of the national ecosystem, with more international collaborations, stronger interdisciplinary research and stronger links with industry and government,” they added. 

The country’s success in Teaming calls is down to several factors, including having established researchers, strong national support and co-funding options, and links to leading European institutions. 

Natia Anastasi from Neapolis University Pafos is one of those to have benefited from Teaming in Cyprus, even though her project wasn’t fully funded. She headed a consortium aiming to create a new centre that would serve as an interactive science museum for children, but after the first study phase, the project narrowly missed out on phase two funding. 

“The Teaming project was fantastic. First of all, there are very few [EU-funded] projects where you get to work so closely with colleagues from your own country. Usually the opposite is encouraged. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had in terms of collaborative projects,” she said. 

“A Teaming project is not just like any other European project, it's not just about doing all the activities and all the deliverables, it's a much greater social, economic and even political investment from society in general,” she added. 

Structural challenges

Despite the positives, Teaming is not without its issues. The nature of the instrument means that building a new, separate research centre is the best way to reap the most rewards from the funding. Cyprus has been able to do this very successfully. But some countries, such as Lithuania, are more interested in connecting their current institutions. 

“In Lithuania we understand that Teaming is a big project, it’s an opportunity for a country to move forwards and get a new excellence centre and to increase participation levels in Horizon Europe. But at the same time, in Lithuania we are dealing with an institutional fragmentation problem. We are getting advice from different experts, including the European Commission, that we should combine our institutions,” Vilkanauskytė said. 

Teaming does allow the development or modernisation of units or departments within already existing structures, but that comes with its own challenges, including who manages the intellectual property of any product designed within the project, and also who manages any future funding that may come in. 

This is an issue for one of Lithuania’s current Teaming projects, which is already trying to work through these processes. 

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Beyond this, it is not simple to coordinate funding for Teaming projects. The EU contribution has to be matched by the grant winner or its national government. Often, these matching funds come from EU structural funds. These funds usually have to be set aside in advance, and then it is a gamble as to whether or not the country wins any Teaming projects. 

“In the last funding period, we had a budget reserved for Teaming projects from structural funds, but this was never used. So, on the planning level, if you're working with structural funds, it's quite a challenge,” Vilkanauskytė said. 

Jinga also noted structural and political challenges to overcome when applying for the Teaming project, but that the university was well backed. 

“The support received by our university from the Ministry of Investments and European Projects and from the National Research Authority was very important,” he said. “In practice, this was a project proposal supported both politically and at the implementation level by the staff of these two ministries, to whom we are grateful.”

The future of Teaming

Plans for the next Horizon Europe programme are still far from certain, but as things currently stand Widening measures such as Teaming will likely continue. This is good for countries such as Romania or Malta that haven’t yet fully benefited. 

But there are questions over how many Teaming-backed centres of excellence are ultimately needed, and whether a bigger priority should be making the already established centres more financially sustainable. 

“We still want to see Teaming as an option, in order to not create discrepancies between Widening countries that still have not received many, but I’d be really happy if there was a broader discussion about how many Teaming projects a country needs and what is the final goal,” Vilkanauskytė said. 

She suggested that other instruments with smaller budgets, such as Twinning projects that connect already existing institutions to learn, share and network, are in many cases more suitable. 

The EU recently launched a new Teaming Synergies call to try to create links between existing and future centres of excellence. It has an overall indicative budget of €7 million. 

For Romania, and UMPCD, the focus is now on capitalising on winning this coveted EU grant. 

“The long-term benefits are about building sustained excellence, not only delivering results during the six years Teaming project period,” Jinga said. “We expect the centre of excellence to become a stable platform for cutting-edge research in liquid biopsy.”

Editor's note: This article was updated on June 4 to include additional data provided by the European Commission.