ASSOCIATION HOSPITALIERE DE BRUXELLES-CENTRE HOSPITALIER UNIVERSITAIRE JULES BORDET

Their core work

Institut Jules Bordet is a university hospital in Brussels specializing in oncology — cancer diagnosis, treatment, and research. Within H2020, they contribute clinical expertise and patient cohorts to large-scale European cancer research projects, focusing on immunoprofiling of tumors, personalized breast cancer screening, and next-generation sequencing diagnostics. Their role is that of a clinical partner providing human biological samples, patient data, and oncology domain knowledge to multi-center studies.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 involvement (2018) centered on personalized breast cancer screening — population-level risk scoring using genetics and mammography. By 2019-2020, the focus shifted decisively toward molecular and immune profiling across multiple cancer types, incorporating advanced techniques like CyTOF, RNAseq, genomics, and liquid biopsies. The trajectory moves from single-cancer screening toward pan-cancer molecular diagnostics and immunology.

Moving toward multi-omics cancer diagnostics and immune profiling, positioning them as a clinical site for precision oncology validation studies.

How they like to work

Institut Jules Bordet participates exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator — consistent with a clinical institution contributing patients and samples to researcher-led consortia. With 80 unique partners across 12 countries from just 3 projects, they operate in very large consortia (averaging ~27 partners per project). This suggests they are a trusted clinical node that major European cancer networks want in their consortium for patient access and oncology expertise.

Despite only 3 projects, they connect to 80 distinct partners across 12 countries — a wide European network built through participation in large multi-center clinical studies. Their network spans major oncology research hubs across Western and Southern Europe.

What sets them apart

As a dedicated cancer hospital (not a general university), Jules Bordet brings focused oncology clinical infrastructure — patient cohorts, tumor biobanks, and diagnostic workflows — that general hospitals cannot match. Their combination of breast cancer screening expertise with emerging immunoprofiling and NGS diagnostics makes them a valuable clinical validation site. For consortium builders, they offer direct access to a cancer-specialized institution in Brussels with regulatory experience in EC-IVD compliance.

Highlights from their portfolio

• MyPeBS
  Large international randomized trial on personalized breast cancer screening — their highest-funded project at EUR 373,665, with a long timeline extending to 2027.
• oncNGS
  Addresses the regulatory gap in NGS-based cancer diagnostics, tackling EC-IVD clinical validity — directly relevant to clinical adoption of liquid biopsies.
• IMMUcan
  Ambitious pan-cancer immunoprofiling effort across five tumor types using advanced multi-omics techniques (CyTOF, RNAseq, microbiome analysis).