Money well spent - Research Commissioner thanks Biomed II researchers for their hard work
Welcome to the 21st century. This is the forecast: More than half a billion people will develop diabetes in their lifetime, one in three people will develop cancer; the AIDS virus is poised to go rampaging throughout Eastern Europe at what scientists describe as 'an alarming rate'; and 55% of EU citizens will die from diseases brought on by their clogged-up arteries. The facts are unequivocally depressing. Yet optimism abounded early in January, when European researchers visited Brussels to tell each other and officials from the European Commission how they are successfully working to understand and prevent the onslaught of Europe's most prevalent diseases. The Commission's Research Directorate General organised the event to showcase the successes of a number of projects it has financed under its Biomed II programme as well as to thank researchers in this field for their continuing efforts to combat disease in the European Union. Introducing four successful Biomed II-funded projects, whose recent advances have major implications in the fight against cancer, heart disease, diabetes and AIDS, the European Commissioner for Research, Philippe Busquin, emphasised the importance of the scientists' work for European citizens: 'European citizens are reaching out to scientists for help', he said. 'More than ever before, scientists have to reach out to citizens because citizens expect more from them. I am very pleased to see that many scientists do reach out and would like to thank the researchers working flat out in Europe, trying to meet the concerns of the citizens.' Emphasising the importance of collaboration through the EU research programmes he said: 'research for Europeans should be carried out at European policy level'. The European Commission's most recent Biomedical and Health research programme, known as Biomed II, ran from 1994 to 1998 and marked 20 years of sustained and increasing involvement from the European Commission in this field. The Commission's first biomedical research programme began in1978 with only three projects and a budget of 1 million ecus. In the last ten years this figure has increased massively, with Biomed II alone receiving a total of 3550 multinational project proposals between 1994 to 1998. The programme covers a covers a range of research areas: from pharmaceuticals to biomedical engineering, brain research, all major diseases (cancer, cardiovascular, infectious, age-related and rare diseases), as well as occupational and environmental health, human genome, public health and biomedical ethics. The Commission recently announced that the Biomed II programme has been particularly successful in promoting European research on understanding mechanisms of the origins of disease and disease progression and in assessing strategies for treatment. The scientists presenting their research in Brussels on 7 January reinforced this statement. Dr Jens Lundgren of Huidovre University Hospital in Denmark, for example, underlined the usefulness of cross-border collaborative research for studying the effectiveness of AIDS therapy: 'To assess clinical HIV in Europe you need a large number of patients from across Europe, so that you can monitor all the relevant signs. It is vital to collect blood samples, for example, particularly to detect the development of resistance', he said. His team's project, dubbed 'EuroSIDA' is the largest international study on people infected with AIDS in the world. A huge network of researchers from 60 clinics in 20 countries including several countries in Eastern Europe analysed data from 150,000 patients. The project originally won funding from the Biomed I programme in 1984, and was funded under Biomed II from 1997. Dr Lundgren's consortium's funds will run out in May of this year, and is therefore bidding for EU assistance again from the Fifth Framework Programme. 'We have observed a tremendous improvement in the prognosis of patients over the last three years. But at the same time new patterns of illness among some patients and resistance to and possible toxic effects from the various anti-HIV treatments are concerns that require continued monitoring into the next millennium', said Dr. Lundgren. 'The study would not have been possible without EU funds from the Biomed I and II programmes', he continued. EuroSIDA has also benefited from support from Glaxo Wellcome, Pharmacia and UpJohn, and Merck, Sharp and Dome'. Biomed II support has also helped researchers trying to understand the mechanisms of diabetes to move closer to a treatment through gene therapy. Dr. Philippe Froguel of the Institut Pasteur in Lille, France, explained: 'the biggest problem with treating diabetes is that we don't know what causes it. We don't understand it, he said. Beside the study of diabetes, his team also aimed to build the tools to better understand the disease. This meant they needed to develop common databases and improve statistical genetic analyses specific to complex traits, and the definition of quality standards of genetic studies. They have collated and pooled data from different European countries for analysis. 'The final step was to suggest to American counterparts the establishment of an international consortium for the genetic study of diabetes, which led to identification of a major diabetes locus on chromosome 20, as originally suggested by the earlier EU studies. This discovery is probably the most important breakthrough in the diabetes field for 20 years', said Dr Froguel. 'The project has shown that Europe can lead the way', he added. The scientists' work is now attracting growing interest from the EU pharmaceutical industry and in December 1999 the team won approval for fresh funding under FP5 to pursue work in this field. Professor John Martin of the Gene Research Unit at University College London was equally vocal on the benefits of joint research ventures in the EU. His research is made possible by combining the expertise of researchers from the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany and Italy. 'Together', he proudly announced at the Brussels meeting 'we have discovered a new treatment for heart disease'. Atherosclerosis - narrowing of the arteries in the heart, brain or leg - is the biggest cause of death in the EU, said Professor Martin. It causes heart attacks, strokes and peripheral cardiovascular disease. With the assistance of Biomed 2 funds, though, Professor Martin's team has discovered that a particular growth factor called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VGF) required in the foetus for the growth of blood vessels is also at work in adult arteries, where it helps to repair damaged blood vessels. 'This discovery has applications in preventing or minimising atherosclerosis', says Professor Martin. 'These discoveries would not have been possible without a combined European team. Each member of the team analysed one aspect of the problem: Cell biology and coordination was undertaken in the UK; clinical research and gene therapy in Finland; animal pharmacology in Italy and the plasmid development in cell biology in Germany', he said. Martin's team has now patented the fruits of their work and, to exploit its research has set up a small biotechnology company 'Eurogene', after raising 1.5 million pounds of venture capital, just 18 months after winning its EU research grant. 'The pan-European nature of the company has attracted a lot of interest - particularly from Japan and the USA', Professor Martin said. If clinical trials of their anti-artherosclerosis treatments are successful, the team could find themselves with an extremely valuable product: 'Clearly it's a high risk. We can't guarantee it (the treatment) will work at this stage but it could be a multi-billion dollar market', Professor Martin explained. Any profits the company makes however, he says, will be ploughed back into the teams' respective universities to fund future research. The Biomed II programme has clearly helped European scientists to better understand the diseases many of us are sadly all too familiar with. Other successful Biomed II projects concentrated on cancer and autism for example, and as a result of work funded by Biomed II several hundred research articles have been published. The European Commission is continuing to distribute research funds for the life sciences under its FP5 thematic programme Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources, through the Key Actions: 'Control of infectious diseases'; 'Environment and health'; and 'The ageing population', as well as through many of the programme's generic activities, such as research into genomes and diseases of genetic origin, or neuroscience. The results of the first call for proposals for funding under this programme are now available.