The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation published, on Thursday 27 August, a report on the effects of European funding for collaborative health biotech research.
According to this analysis, which covers 154 projects funded by Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, the latest of which were completed at the end of 2025, for total European investment of €1,08 billion, these projects brought together 2,048 participations from 59 countries, including 26 Member States.
According to the Commission, this pooling of universities, research bodies, companies and hospitals makes it possible to bring together skills and resources that a national programme could not mobilise on the same scale.
The projects also resulted in publications, 8,560 in total, as well as 69 patent applications. Eighteen had been granted in April 2026.
The projects also led to 172 clinical studies.
The report cites in particular the R21/MM malaria vaccine, the result of the European project OptiMalVax, which was approved by the WHO and used in Africa.
Moreover, among 53 projects assessed by the Commission’s ‘Innovation Radar’, which identifies high-potential innovations, 24.1% of innovations are considered market-ready, compared with 18.6% across all the fields analysed by this tool, and 40.2% could create new markets.
The Commission is using these results to defend, in the next European budget (MFF) for 2028-2034, the continuation of funding for collaborative health biotech research, from scientific discovery through to commercialisation.
To see the report: https://aeur.eu/f/n7c (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)