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EuroBioForum: Building the ERA in health research
DISCUSSION
New Biotechnology Volume 25, Number 1 June 2008
EuroFocus EuroBioForum: Building the ERA in health research Opening presentation at EuroBioForum 2007, Lisbon (5th–7th December 2007) Patrik Kolar
EuroFocus DISCUSSION
A year ago in Helsinki we started the first EuroBioForum Conference by ‘rethinking’ the concept and the structure of the European Research Area (ERA). We asked ourselves many important questions, such as: How to better coordinate European, national and regional research efforts in order to overcome the fragmentation and avoid duplication? How to streamline individual strategies of different Research Funding Agencies into a coherent funding plan at the European level? What could be learned from experiences of coordination of national and regional programmes through the joint ERA-NET shemes? How could these mechanisms be further improved? These were and remain some of the key challenges for the success of the concept of the European Research Area and for positioning science and technological research into a core of the renewed Lisbon agenda. 2007 has been a particularly significant year in reshaping the European Research Area – by learning from the past and defining the key issues for the future. Let me point out a few most important milestones. On 22 December 2006 the first calls for proposals of the new 7th European Research Framework Programme (FP7) were launched. FP7 is the world’s largest single publicly funded
22
www.elsevier.com/locate/nbt
transnational research programme. It has the highest ever budget of an EU R&D Framework Programme: over 54 billion s, a 40% increase from FP6 at 2004 prices. It is also the longest Framework Programme, running for seven years until 2013. As FP7 has more money over a longer period, this allows longer term research planning. Within FP7, around 8 billion s are dedicated for funding life sciences research. Some 6 billion s under FP7’s Cooperation programme supports health research with another 2 billion s supporting research on food, agriculture and fisheries, and biotechnology. Besides the significant increase in budget the main differences – as well as one of the main challenges of the FP7 – are its new elements aiming to boost scientific excellence and bringing science, business and society closer together than ever before. For the first time the fundamental, risky frontier research is being funded in the FP7 Ideas Programme by the newly established European Research Council (ERC) led autonomously by the scientists themselves. During the whole duration of FP7, the ERC will support breakthrough frontier research with approximately 1 billion s annually for individual research grants for both young and advanced researchers through ‘Starting’ and ‘Advanced’ Grants funding schemes. A pressing need for the introduction of this new approach to the fundamental research
on the European level was clearly demonstrated by over 9.000 applications for Starting ERC grants in all scientific disciplines received as a response to the first call for proposals. Addressing better the needs of European industry in order to boost its competitiveness was another challenge in FP7. The process of establishing the European Technology Platforms (ETPs), bringing together all relevant stakeholders – including researchers, civil society and industry in over 30 sectors (eight from the areas of Life Sciences) was begun already during the second half of the FP6. ETPs developed strategic, long-term research agendas in areas such as: Innovative medicines Nanomedicine Industrial biotechnology and biofuels Strategic research agendas of the ETPs are being implemented through public and private investment at European, national and regional levels. At the European level, for the moment, six of the ETPs were identified to be brought to the next ’integration’ level – to be developed into the so called Joint Technology Initiatives or JTIs. JTIs will represent a new relationship between private and public investment in research on a massive scale. It is my particular pleasure at this point to say that the Council of Ministers of the EU on 23 November (2007) reached political agreement on four JTIs, one of them being the JTI on Innovative Medicines (IMI). IMI will form a public–private partnership between the EC and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations. Industry will co-fund collaborative research projects in Europe, together with academia, SMEs, and patients associations supported by public funds. The aim is to provide new tools to accelerate development of safer and more effective
1871-6784/$ - see front matter ß 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nbt.2008.04.012
medicines by tackling four key pre-competitive research bottlenecks in the drug development process, namely: prediction of safety, prediction of efficacy, knowledge management, education & training. Within the first half of 2008, IMI will launch its first calls for proposals which will by their nature complement and bring further the research being funded through the usual calls for proposals of the FP7 ‘‘ Health ’’ research programme. How else is the European Research Area in Life Sciences being created beyond FP7? At least two areas of crucial importance have to be mentioned: Research Infrastructures of pan-European and even global importance and Coordination of National Research Programmes through the ERA-NET and ERA-NET plus schemes As far as the Research Infrastructures are concerned, in 2006 the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) identified 35 priority infrastructure projects of pan-European importance to be implemented within next decade, 6 of them being from the Biomedical and Life Sciences having total estimated construction costs of around 1.6 billion s. The first call for proposals in the area of research infrastructures in FP7 resulted in selection of six pilot phase projects for the implementation of the ESFRI Roadmap from the areas of Infrastructures for clinical trials and biotherapy, biobanking and biomolecular resources,
advanced translational research, phenotyping and archiving the model mammalian genomes, and integrated structural biology. Moving to the area of the coordination of national research programmes, mainly through the ERA-NET schemes established during FP6, continued and further developed into ’ERA-NET plus’ schemes within FP7, let me first say that these schemes have already proven themselves crucial and indispensable to structuring the ERA and pooling together resources far beyond the European Commission’s Framework Programmes. They not only represent a truly bottom-up cooperation and coordination of activities of European research funding agencies, identifying the joint needs and priorities, but catalyse development of common procedures, peer review and joint funding mechanisms. From ongoing ERA-NET projects, running from FP6, 11 are from the health and biomedical research domain, covering areas as diverse as systems biology and genomics, medicines for children, rare diseases and neurosciences. Several of these initiatives might within forthcoming years be transformed into the ERA-NET plus schemes, launching joint calls for proposals and with their research being funded from the common budget. As you see, many of the life sciences research challenges are being tackled within the ERA, established funding instruments are being improved and new ones are being designed to meet the expectations of researchers and address the needs of the society. But – how to recognize and choose the strategic research priorities properly, to incorporate them in a
DISCUSSION
timely fashion into policy objectives and transform these objectives into actions having a desired impact? The best way is certainly through a dialogue. EuroBioForum, being itself a research support action funded by FP6, has already proven its value as a discussion platform, bringing new mature ideas for research programmes in life sciences directly from the scientific community to the national and European funding agencies. In this way, EuroBioForum directly contributes to the priority setting for life sciences within the whole ERA. The titles of the six brokerage sessions for research programmes, that we will discuss within the next two days, speak for themselves and their importance does not need a long justification. However, they are also revealing the strong global dimension of life sciences research today and in this way they are also putting the EuroBioForum itself on a global level. And this is where the future lies! On behalf of the European Commission I would like to wish you all fruitful discussions and sparkling ideas for new research agendas, collaborations and partnerships emerging from this conference. Let me finally also sincerely thank the European Science Foundation for the organisation and to the Portuguese Presidency of the Council for hosting EuroBioForum 2007 and to every and all of you who are personally contributing to the success of this event. Patrik Kolar European Commission Directorate-General for Research, Directorate F: Health, Unit F.4, Genomics and Systems Biology
www.elsevier.com/locate/nbt
23
EuroFocus DISCUSSION
New Biotechnology Volume 25, Number 1 June 2008
New Biotechnology Volume 25, Number 1 June 2008
EuroFocus EuroBioForum: Building the ERA in health research Opening presentation at EuroBioForum 2007, Lisbon (5th–7th December 2007) Patrik Kolar
EuroFocus DISCUSSION
A year ago in Helsinki we started the first EuroBioForum Conference by ‘rethinking’ the concept and the structure of the European Research Area (ERA). We asked ourselves many important questions, such as: How to better coordinate European, national and regional research efforts in order to overcome the fragmentation and avoid duplication? How to streamline individual strategies of different Research Funding Agencies into a coherent funding plan at the European level? What could be learned from experiences of coordination of national and regional programmes through the joint ERA-NET shemes? How could these mechanisms be further improved? These were and remain some of the key challenges for the success of the concept of the European Research Area and for positioning science and technological research into a core of the renewed Lisbon agenda. 2007 has been a particularly significant year in reshaping the European Research Area – by learning from the past and defining the key issues for the future. Let me point out a few most important milestones. On 22 December 2006 the first calls for proposals of the new 7th European Research Framework Programme (FP7) were launched. FP7 is the world’s largest single publicly funded
22
www.elsevier.com/locate/nbt
transnational research programme. It has the highest ever budget of an EU R&D Framework Programme: over 54 billion s, a 40% increase from FP6 at 2004 prices. It is also the longest Framework Programme, running for seven years until 2013. As FP7 has more money over a longer period, this allows longer term research planning. Within FP7, around 8 billion s are dedicated for funding life sciences research. Some 6 billion s under FP7’s Cooperation programme supports health research with another 2 billion s supporting research on food, agriculture and fisheries, and biotechnology. Besides the significant increase in budget the main differences – as well as one of the main challenges of the FP7 – are its new elements aiming to boost scientific excellence and bringing science, business and society closer together than ever before. For the first time the fundamental, risky frontier research is being funded in the FP7 Ideas Programme by the newly established European Research Council (ERC) led autonomously by the scientists themselves. During the whole duration of FP7, the ERC will support breakthrough frontier research with approximately 1 billion s annually for individual research grants for both young and advanced researchers through ‘Starting’ and ‘Advanced’ Grants funding schemes. A pressing need for the introduction of this new approach to the fundamental research
on the European level was clearly demonstrated by over 9.000 applications for Starting ERC grants in all scientific disciplines received as a response to the first call for proposals. Addressing better the needs of European industry in order to boost its competitiveness was another challenge in FP7. The process of establishing the European Technology Platforms (ETPs), bringing together all relevant stakeholders – including researchers, civil society and industry in over 30 sectors (eight from the areas of Life Sciences) was begun already during the second half of the FP6. ETPs developed strategic, long-term research agendas in areas such as: Innovative medicines Nanomedicine Industrial biotechnology and biofuels Strategic research agendas of the ETPs are being implemented through public and private investment at European, national and regional levels. At the European level, for the moment, six of the ETPs were identified to be brought to the next ’integration’ level – to be developed into the so called Joint Technology Initiatives or JTIs. JTIs will represent a new relationship between private and public investment in research on a massive scale. It is my particular pleasure at this point to say that the Council of Ministers of the EU on 23 November (2007) reached political agreement on four JTIs, one of them being the JTI on Innovative Medicines (IMI). IMI will form a public–private partnership between the EC and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations. Industry will co-fund collaborative research projects in Europe, together with academia, SMEs, and patients associations supported by public funds. The aim is to provide new tools to accelerate development of safer and more effective
1871-6784/$ - see front matter ß 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nbt.2008.04.012
medicines by tackling four key pre-competitive research bottlenecks in the drug development process, namely: prediction of safety, prediction of efficacy, knowledge management, education & training. Within the first half of 2008, IMI will launch its first calls for proposals which will by their nature complement and bring further the research being funded through the usual calls for proposals of the FP7 ‘‘ Health ’’ research programme. How else is the European Research Area in Life Sciences being created beyond FP7? At least two areas of crucial importance have to be mentioned: Research Infrastructures of pan-European and even global importance and Coordination of National Research Programmes through the ERA-NET and ERA-NET plus schemes As far as the Research Infrastructures are concerned, in 2006 the European Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) identified 35 priority infrastructure projects of pan-European importance to be implemented within next decade, 6 of them being from the Biomedical and Life Sciences having total estimated construction costs of around 1.6 billion s. The first call for proposals in the area of research infrastructures in FP7 resulted in selection of six pilot phase projects for the implementation of the ESFRI Roadmap from the areas of Infrastructures for clinical trials and biotherapy, biobanking and biomolecular resources,
advanced translational research, phenotyping and archiving the model mammalian genomes, and integrated structural biology. Moving to the area of the coordination of national research programmes, mainly through the ERA-NET schemes established during FP6, continued and further developed into ’ERA-NET plus’ schemes within FP7, let me first say that these schemes have already proven themselves crucial and indispensable to structuring the ERA and pooling together resources far beyond the European Commission’s Framework Programmes. They not only represent a truly bottom-up cooperation and coordination of activities of European research funding agencies, identifying the joint needs and priorities, but catalyse development of common procedures, peer review and joint funding mechanisms. From ongoing ERA-NET projects, running from FP6, 11 are from the health and biomedical research domain, covering areas as diverse as systems biology and genomics, medicines for children, rare diseases and neurosciences. Several of these initiatives might within forthcoming years be transformed into the ERA-NET plus schemes, launching joint calls for proposals and with their research being funded from the common budget. As you see, many of the life sciences research challenges are being tackled within the ERA, established funding instruments are being improved and new ones are being designed to meet the expectations of researchers and address the needs of the society. But – how to recognize and choose the strategic research priorities properly, to incorporate them in a
DISCUSSION
timely fashion into policy objectives and transform these objectives into actions having a desired impact? The best way is certainly through a dialogue. EuroBioForum, being itself a research support action funded by FP6, has already proven its value as a discussion platform, bringing new mature ideas for research programmes in life sciences directly from the scientific community to the national and European funding agencies. In this way, EuroBioForum directly contributes to the priority setting for life sciences within the whole ERA. The titles of the six brokerage sessions for research programmes, that we will discuss within the next two days, speak for themselves and their importance does not need a long justification. However, they are also revealing the strong global dimension of life sciences research today and in this way they are also putting the EuroBioForum itself on a global level. And this is where the future lies! On behalf of the European Commission I would like to wish you all fruitful discussions and sparkling ideas for new research agendas, collaborations and partnerships emerging from this conference. Let me finally also sincerely thank the European Science Foundation for the organisation and to the Portuguese Presidency of the Council for hosting EuroBioForum 2007 and to every and all of you who are personally contributing to the success of this event. Patrik Kolar European Commission Directorate-General for Research, Directorate F: Health, Unit F.4, Genomics and Systems Biology
www.elsevier.com/locate/nbt
23
EuroFocus DISCUSSION
New Biotechnology Volume 25, Number 1 June 2008