Amsterdam UMC involved in planned Horizon project with Israeli university
Amsterdam UMC plans to join a new collaboration with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem through the Horizon programme, for which the UvA was set to provide a PhD place. The UvA had previously decided not to enter into any further collaborations with Israeli parties, but the university hospital is taking its own approach.
Amsterdam UMC plans to start a new research project on January 1st in which the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is also participating. This is evident from public data in the EU project database CORDIS. The project – FlexCAT – is a European research and training project that aims to discover new ways of tackling proteins that are difficult to treat, for example in cancer. The University of Amsterdam is also listed as a partner in that project. The UvA had previously terminated an exchange programme with the same Hebrew University.
Collaborations with Israeli partners are regularly the subject of debate. In the autumn of 2025, the UvA itself decided “for the time being not to launch any new research projects within Horizon Europe with Israeli partners.” This policy had already been in place since the summer of 2025, pending the outcome of an investigation into human rights violations by Israel. In October 2025, the Executive Board decided to press ahead with this intention, after having noted “with horror” that there is “increasing (scientific) evidence that genocide is taking place in Gaza”.
Different policy
The fact that Amsterdam UMC, which has close ties to the UvA, is now nevertheless participating in a research project with the Hebrew University is because the hospital applies its own policy framework for international collaborations. According to a spokesperson for the university hospital, every collaboration is assessed against this framework: “We are a separate legal entity, affiliated with both the UvA and the VU. As regards Horizon collaborations that also involve partners from Israel, we do not rule these out a priori; we assess these on a case-by-case basis as well.”
Other projects
The collaboration with the Hebrew University is not the only one at the UMC involving Israeli parties: since March this year, the hospital has been participating in a research project, COMPASS, in which GE Medical Systems Israel, a subsidiary of the American company GE, is taking part.
Last week, the Leiden University magazine Mare reported on another project in which the Amsterdam UMC is involved: VirlON. The Israeli company 1Base Pharmaceutical was reportedly set to take part in that project. The weekly magazine discovered that the company is based in the Israeli settlement of Naale, located in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank. According to the UMC spokesperson, 1Base has since withdrawn from the project.
UvA involved
It is striking that, in the case of the projects with the Hebrew University and – initially – the project in which 1Base was involved, the UvA itself is also mentioned separately as a partner, meaning that it is not just the Amsterdam UMC that is involved. A spokesperson for the UvA explains that this is because the Amsterdam UMC cannot award PhDs itself and therefore requires the UvA or the VU for this purpose. However, “if a PhD candidate from Amsterdam UMC is involved in this project, the PhD defence will in any case not take place at the UvA,” the spokesperson said. “The UvA is not carrying out any activities within these projects and therefore has no involvement whatsoever, in line with the decision of October 2025.”
An active job vacancy shows that this specific project does include a PhD programme at the UvA. The VU is not mentioned as a partner in CORDIS for the FlexCAT project. “When preparing the vacancy, insufficient account was taken of this new policy at the UvA,” the spokesperson subsequently stated. Following enquiries from Folia, “discussions are taking place with the researcher concerned to explore how the PhD programme might be structured differently.”
