Development of cell-free protein synthesis platforms for discovery and/or production of biologicals

Forthcoming EU call topic HORIZON-HLTH-2027-01-IND-01 · HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions. Part of call HORIZON-HLTH-2027-01: Cluster 1 - Health (Single stage - 2027/1). Opens 2026-10-29; next deadline 2027-02-17. Topic page: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/HORIZON-HLTH-2027-01-IND-01

Expected Outcome: This topic aims at supporting activities that are enabling or contributing to one or several expected impacts of destination “Maintaining an innovative, sustainable, and competitive EU health industry”. To that end, proposals under this topic should aim to deliver results that are directed at, tailored towards and contributing to all the following expected outcomes: - Biopharmaceutical industries get access to streamlined development and production processes for peptide- or protein-based biologicals. - Health systems benefit from the availability of enhanced or decentralised production systems for innovative health technologies that involve peptides or proteins, and which improve health and care. - Citizens and patients will benefit from better access, availability and affordability of pharmaceuticals based on biologicals.

Scope: Cell-Free Protein Synthesis (CFPS) has been employed in fundamental biological research for decades, however, interest for the approach as a viable means for drug development and production has only emerged in recent years. The advantages that CFPS provides in terms of efficiency, simplicity, flexibility, cost- and time savings outweigh the hurdles that are still to be overcome for CFPS to become a routine manufacturing system for peptide- or protein-based biologicals. Currently, there are several CFPS systems used that are either based on prokaryotic or eukaryotic cell lysates (including mammalian) or fully synthetic systems consisting of all the molecular machinery necessary to create functional proteins. The choice of a specific lysate is dictated by the target…