Building the European Nanomedicine Research and Innovation Area: 10 years funding innovative research projects

It has been 10 years since the establishment of EuroNanoMed (ENM), presently in its third phase. For those 10 years, research and innovation funding organisations in Europe and beyond have been joining forces to fund excellent innovative research projects in three main topics defined by the European Technology Platform on Nanomedicine: targeted drug delivery, diagnostics, and regenerative medicine. Ten joint transnational calls have been launched (the 10th call is ongoing). So far, 90 transnational projects have been funded, including 460 research groups from over 20 countries. In the Joint Transnational Call 2017—co-funded by national and regional funding organizations and the European Commission (EC) —16 projects were funded with a total investment of 14 million euros, including 3.3 million euros from the EC. In addition to ENM's main activity of funding transnational innovative research projects, it collaborates with sister initiatives in nanomedicine and translational research. ENM has organised review seminars as well as safety, ethics, and regulatory affairs training workshops. The purpose of this article is to introduce the ENM initiatives to the scientific community, that together with its collaborators shape the map of nanomedicine in Europe.