The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Health~Holland make available funding to the UMCG for the PPP Allowance scheme and the PPP Innovation subsidy scheme on an annual basis. Within the UMCG, the programs are coordinated by the UMCG Innovation Center. The funding options can be applied to support and extend the goals of a joint project by adding experiments, personnel and/or consumables that can strengthen the success of the project and contribute to establish a long-term partnership with the private partner(s). Both schemes are tailored to diverse types of initiatives and partnerships.
The PPP Allowance is allocated to the UMCG by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Health~Holland on an annual basis. The allowance can be applied to extend the goals of a joint - fundamental, industrial or experimental - project in collaboration with large companies, national or international.
Detailed information on the Call and the application process:
The old PPP allowance program has been terminated, due to the fact that the funding allocated by Health-Holland to the UMCG has been awarded and completed towards numerous projects throughout the years. At the moment, considering the absence of available funding, we are no longer receiving project applications. Please note that the Innovation Center and the PPP allowance team are working on identifying and developing new funding opportunities, provided by Health Holland on supporting public-private partnerships. More information on the availability of funding will be communicated within the coming months.
Contact [email protected] to receive information on the program, have an intake meeting to discuss your idea and receive the application documents.
The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, through the Top Sector Life Sciences & Health (LSH), and Health~Holland, is introducing a new subsidy framework titled “Public-Private Partnership Innovation Subsidy” which be formally launched from 2025, with a Pilot call in 2024.
The UMCG Innovation Center has received the mandate to manage the Pilot Call 2024 to support collaborations with private partners, with focus for projects with Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The Pilot Call 2024 aims to encourage industrial research, focusing on collaborations between the UMCG researchers and Dutch Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), with high level of societal, scientific, and economic impact on the region of Northern Netherlands. A budget of 1.7M EUR is available to the UMCG for this 2024 Call.
The scheme is structured as a deadline-based Call, with two application phases as follows:
Detailed information on the Call and the application process:
The UMCG Innovation Center organizes two open information sessions for interested UMCG researchers: 14 May between 12:00-13:00 and 28 May between 16:00-17:00. Please fill out form with the required information, in order to sign up for one of the sessions. Please note that the sessions can be joined in person or online. The location and the hybrid link will be shared prior to the event.
UMCG PPP Innovation Subsidy open information sessions
For more information on the application procedures and requirements, please contact [email protected]
Patients with Crohn’s disease often ask: “ What should I eat? This study investigates whether the Groningen Anti-inflammatory Diet, based on extensive literature research, or colon-delivered vitamins, containing vitamins B2, B3 and C, can reduce inflammation and restore dysbiosis in patients with Crohn’s disease and alter the gut-microbiome in healthy people.
University Medical Center Groningen and the private sector partner Inflammatix, Inc. join forces to improve diagnosis and clinical decision support in patients with early sepsis.
Before the pandemic, 50 million patients were annually affected by sepsis worldwide. The syndrome is caused by the body’s own dysregulated response to a bacterial, viral, or fungal infection. Because of the maladaptive process, various organs of the patient can be damaged, causing 11 million sepsis-related deaths worldwide. The pandemic with severe cases of COVID19 meeting the definition of viral sepsis has led to a steep increase in these numbers. The superior goal in healthcare is to recognize infection as early as possible, distinguishing viral from bacterial infections to inform therapy. The latter requires urgent application of antibiotics, with each hour of delayed treatment introducing additional risk for the patient. But those treatments come with a flipside: rampant overuse of antibiotics drives the development of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, rendering the currently available antibiotics useless. The newest estimates indicate nearly 5 million deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance. Novel precision diagnostic approaches can help balance between overtreating the uninfected and missing the infected patients, thereby improving individual patient outcomes and reducing the socioeconomic burden of sepsis and AMR on society.
The project will approach the diagnostic dilemma by integrating various information sources – patient demography and history, vital signs (e.g., heart rate) as well as laboratory values (e.g., number of immune cells in blood), into the development of a single decision support tool for diagnosing, prognostication as well as the identification of treatment response. The project will leverage the existing Acutelines framework within the emergency department of the UMC Groningen, which ensures availability and standardized processing of data and biomaterial such as blood. Overall, high-dimensional data from 1,600 patients will drive the research project. Molecular signatures from the blood – derived from both the activity (expression) of genes in immune cells and the proteins available in the liquid part of the blood – will constitute the core layer of information. Therefore, large parts of the project will aim to identify and validate novel and existing molecular signatures and bring them into context with other data. This approach requires the use of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, a core expertise Inflammatix brings into the collaboration, besides the technical proficiency of providing rapid point-of-care-based gene expression diagnostics.
The project aims to deliver better clinical decision support for patients with suspected sepsis – ranging from molecular signature discovery, validation, data integration to reaching a health economic and outcome evaluation and prospective performance validation of the final machine-learning enabled model supported by rapid point-of-care gene expression analysis.
In this project, the University Medical Centre Groningen and Amsterdam University Medical Centre will collaborate with CSL Vifor to investigate whether lowering blood potassium levels can improve the treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Worldwide, about 10% of people have CKD, posing a significant health risk which can lead to premature death. In Europe, CKD-associated costs are 140 billion euros per year, surpassing costs associated with diabetes and cancer. A cornerstone therapy is medication inhibiting the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system (RAAS). These medications lower blood pressure and prevent further decline of the kidney function. However, less than half of patients with advanced CKD receive optimal dosages of RAAS-inhibitors. A common reason for reducing or discontinuing RAAS-inhibitors is their potential to increase blood potassium levels in some patients. This suboptimal treatment can pose serious risks, including cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, and even death.
Therefore, this project aims to investigate whether the medicine patiromer can help to optimize the treatment of CKD. Patiromer works by binding with potassium in the intestines, preventing its uptake into the body. Lowering blood potassium levels with patiromer may allow doctors to optimize the use of RAAS-inhibitors, ultimately improving kidney health and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
This project will investigate whether patiromer can help optimize the treatment of CKD with RAAS-inhibitors. It will also define metabolic regulators of the increase in plasma potassium after an acute oral potassium load with or without a potassium. Finally, we will analyze a large Dutch group of kidney patients to address the relationship between suboptimal RAAS-inhibitor use and the risk of future complications. The outcomes of this project may constitute a significant innovation in the treatment of chronic kidney disease globally.
The Lifelines Next prospective birth cohort is an extension of the existing well-known population-based Lifelines cohort running in the Netherlands. In Lifelines Next, future mothers (already enrolled in the Lifelines cohort as well as new participants) will be followed during pregnancy , and their infants will be followed until adulthood. Data from the Lifelines NEXT cohort will be used to identify the major perinatal drivers of development during infancy.
In the Nestlé NEXT study data from the starting Lifelines NEXT cohort will be used to increase knowledge on the impact of the breast milk composition on the gut microbiota, correlated with physiological outcomes such as growth & development, immune and gut health and cognitive development. The major drivers (e.g. gut microbiota , breast milk, components such as HMO’s and maternal mood status) of colic, constipation, allergy and early cognitive development during infancy will be identified.
Discover more about LifeLines NEXT
The project aims to develop humanized mouse models for pediatric cholestatic diseases which will facilitate the development and testing of novel therapeutic strategies. Albireo is a pharmaceutical company with proven expertise in the development of novel therapies for rare cholestatic liver diseases.
Innovation is needed because presently many children are suffering from cholestatic itch and end-stage liver disease, for which frequently no other therapy exists than liver transplantation. The development of novel therapeutic strategies has been hampered by the rare nature of these diseases (1:50,000-100,000 children), which precludes large scale investigations in humans. Only in 2021 the first drugs for pediatric cholestatic liver diseases (PFIC, Alagille syndrome) have received FDA and/or EMA approval.
The progress in science now allows to mimick rare pediatric cholestatic diseases in genetically “humanized” mouse models, with a human tyoe of bile composition and with the human pathological mutations incorporated. The development and testing of these new models will allow to exploire and test novel targets and therapeutic strategies, which will increase the chances the preclinical success will ultimately translate into clinical therapeutic efficacy in patients.
The project is expected to increase insights which genetic pediatric choelstatic liver diseases are amenable to medical interruption of the enterohepatic circulation by mean of inhibition of intestinal bile acid uptake (IBAT-inhibition).
Molecular modeling is a technique that helps us estimate how new mutations might affect the way drugs work on specific targets in the body. For the past seven years, we've been using this method at the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) to help decide on the best treatments for cancer patients, particularly those with lung cancer, in the northeastern part of the Netherlands. Our team, called the Molecular Tumor Board (MTB), includes experts in (Molecular) Pathology, and Oncology, specifically Pulmonary Oncology.
In our project, we aim to enhance our current capabilities and address some challenges. Currently, we have one person working on molecular modeling at the University of Groningen. However, there is a need for more support and an expansion of this service.
Therefore we collaborate with a spin-off from UMCG/RUG called Protyon (established in April 2022). Together, we'll work on detailed molecular simulations and develop software tools.
These tools will help us predict how mutations in kinases, particularly in exon19 and exon20 of EGFR, might activate these proteins. EGFR mutations are important in lung cancer. Our initial data suggests that by looking at how these mutations affect the stability of EGFR, we can predict how responsive patients might be to tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy, a type of cancer treatment. If successful, this research could lead to better treatment for lung cancer caused by EGFR mutations.
Our deliverables are Transfer of manual analysis to Protyon for weekly UMCG-MTB requests, Addition of 2 new EGFR mutations to the analysis coverage, and a Software algorithm to assess activation likelihood of insertion/deletion mutations in EGFR exon19.
In an exciting collaboration, our project focuses on revolutionizing spinal surgeries through a novel public-private partnership. By leveraging cutting-edge technology and advanced planning methods, we aim to enhance patient outcomes in complex spinal procedures. This collaborative effort brings together expertise from both the public and private sectors to address crucial challenges in spinal surgery.
The societal and economic impact of spinal health is immense, affecting countless individuals globally. With spine-related conditions on the rise, there is a pressing need for innovation in spinal surgery and the relevance of the project becomes evident. By improving surgical techniques and outcomes, we aim to alleviate the burden of spinal issues on individuals, families, and healthcare systems, ultimately enhancing overall well-being.
Our project's approach involves introducing 3D planning of titanium vertebrae-replacing cages (VBRCs) as a groundbreaking solution to common issues in spinal surgeries. The innovative use of AI-driven segmentation algorithms ensures precise implant positioning and sizing based on individual patient characteristics. This patient-tailored approach addresses the challenges of weight-bearing distribution, subsidence prevention, and the restoration of spinal balance, contributing significantly to the broader societal challenge of improving spinal health.
As we progress, our project delivers impactful results. Through the utilization of Finite Element Analysis and advanced 3D virtual surgical planning workflows, we hope to enhance surgical accuracy. The end goal is to establish a new standard in spinal surgery, providing a more effective and personalized approach.
