Report calls for comprehensive HIV/AIDS research programme
Europe needs to establish a unified research response to HIV/AIDS which is adequate to the size of the problem. This is the main message from a health report published by the European Action on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES) group. HIV/AIDS is one of the most destructive pandemics in the world's recorded history. Around 39 million people have been infected with HIV and 17 million have died as a result, mostly in developing countries. According to statistics from the UN, AIDS shows no signs of letting up. Nearly five million more are being infected each year. The disease therefore poses an immense challenge to global health. 'However, globally, the quantity of HIV/AIDS research is totally incommensurate with the unprecedented health, scientific, technological, social and political problems of the disease,' says Ismail Serageldin, Chairman of EAGLES, an EU-funded project aimed at strengthening the European responses to the global challenges posed by poverty-related diseases in the developing world. The report points to the excessive fragmentation of European research responses to the pandemic so far. It also highlights a lack of awareness among European policymakers and other stakeholders about the time and money involved in taking, for example, a new construct from a university laboratory to a clinical trial. Even large research councils and charities baulk at the size of the awards necessary to cover these activities. The European Commission itself acts under enormous financial constraints. 'Politically, it is driven by Member States to support broad and intense activity across the whole field of HIV/AIDS research...but it is not given sufficient resources to do the job,' argues the report. An example of resource constraints is the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), which funds capacity building and clinical trials. Under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), the European Commission originally allocated €200 million for the EDCTP. This was meant to be matched with €200 million from national budgets and €200 million from the private sector. However, a number of administrative and management problems mean that, to date, only €40 million has been allocated from the EU budget, and just €37 million from the Member States. The project's report therefore makes some suggestions on how to shape Europe's research response to the pandemic. One key recommendation is to establish a European HIV research programme for developing countries. This would be partly funded by the budget of the European Community and Member States, and would be run by an organisation modelled on the European Research Council (ERC). 'Europe with its unique history and global responsibilities, and its strong economy, has the duty to create such a comprehensive research programme and on a scale to match the scale of the challenge,' says Dr Serageldin. The programme would be responsible for awarding large grants for fundamental and applied research, based on scientific excellence. Both public and private institutions could benefit from these grants provided that all the results would be published. The programme would also have the capacity to form public-private partnerships, focused on translational research, production systems and clinical trials. The authors of the report emphasise the particular need to invest more in the area of vaccine and microbicide research. 'If there were an effective vaccine delivered to those most at risk, or a simple effective preventative measure that a woman could use before sex, what a difference it would make!' they write. The challenge however remains enormous and requires an industrial-scale commitment by both the European Commission and Member States to turn ideas into working products. 'In brief, it means thinking industrially - like a company eager to make a profit, but here eager to save lives,' notes the report. It recommends that Europe create project funding of sufficient depth and duration to allow vaccine products to be completely developed and peer-reviewed. A second round would then be required to take the most promising candidate forward. These efforts should be linked into the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise initiative in order to prioritise the best candidates. In addition, policy incentives could be introduced to encourage the private sector to pursue an AIDS vaccine. Incentives could also be used to spur on research into new anti-retroviral drugs.