EU research funding: a mixed blessing for scientists

20 Aug 2010

Tatum Anderson

Source: TropIKA.net

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Last month, the European Union (EU) published its largest ever call for proposals to fund research, amounting to over €6 billion (US$7.9bn).

The funding for 2011 health research projects draws on the €53 billion budget of the Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7), the EU’s chief instrument for funding research over the period 2007 to 2013. FP7 is administered by the European Commission, the arm of the EU responsible for developing strategy and implementing policy.

For researchers whose focus is the infectious diseases of poverty and health systems, there is plenty of opportunity for funding, according to Dr Ruxandra Draghia-Akli, director of the health directorate within the Directorate General for Research, the Commission’s research department.

Approximately €6.1 billion of the FP7 fund has been earmarked specifically for health research, including the €650m in this latest call alone. But critics say onerous conditions make applying for the European Commission funds off-putting, and others worry that funding for poverty-related health research is being marginalized (see below).

The EU’s funding record

Draghia-Akli is responsible for a whole raft of health research funding, including the part of it that is dedicated to investigating infectious diseases, biotechnology and public health. (The research funding is also allocated to fellowships for individual researchers, strengthening research institutions and basic research for individual EU investigators.)

In this year’s call, for instance, there are specific grants for researching health promotion strategies, dengue and climate change, and emerging infectious diseases with pandemic potential. Previous years have also seen calls for funding devoted to important diseases of poverty, she says. Last year’s call featured a specific call for African investigators – FP7-AFRICA-2010, published on 30th July 2009. Projects receiving an award are expected to start at the beginning of 2011.

Between 2007 and 2009, the EU invested €200m in research on HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria. This has resulted in promising vaccine candidates, drug leads, diagnostic markers and basic research results [1]. According to the G-FINDER survey, the EU was the fourth largest neglected disease R&D funder in the world in 2008, spending more on Buruli ulcer research, for example, than any other funder. The EU is also conducting a pilot project to provide open access to peer-reviewed research articles within a specified period, or to around a fifth of FP7 projects.

“We have a very large number of projects in the area of neglected diseases that had been funded under FP6 and FP7,” says Draghia-Akli. “Also, a series of contracts are under negotiation, and will be funded after a very successful Africa call that was launched last year.”

One of the largest initiatives in this area is the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), funded with €200m from the Commission and matching funds from EU member states. EDCTP runs 44 ongoing phase 2 and 3 clinical trials on HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.

The EU has funded health systems research since the 1980s. Historically, both health systems and neglected diseases research were funded through the INCO-DEV programme (International Scientific Cooperation– Development). This is now part of the larger FP7 programme. Between 2002 and 2006, the EU provided €34 million in funding for 20 projects on health financing, access to healthcare, quality management, health migration and reproductive health.

INCO-DEV helped fund projects dedicated to dengue, leishmaniasis and malaria – known as DENCO, KALANET and BioMalPar, respectively. Today, FP7 is funding the European Management Platform for Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease Entities (EMPERIE). Twenty-seven INCO-DEV projects on neglected diseases from schistosomiasis to onchocerciasis received total funding of some €45 million under FP6 for the period 2002–2006.

This particular funding stream also proved to be a lifeline for many institutions in the South through capacity building and grants. The school of public health at Makerere University in Uganda, Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) in Tanzania and the Health Systems Research Institute in Thailand are just three organizations that were helped by EU funds, says Dr Wim Van Damme of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. He was part of a team that evaluated 43 INCO-DEV North-South health systems research programmes in 2004. “Over the last 20 years, I think this has been the most important source of health systems research, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,” he says. “It has been much appreciated.”

INCO-DEV grants appealed to researchers for a number of other reasons, says Van Damme. Rules stipulated that 50% of funds must be received by southern institutions, for instance. Although not a perfectly balanced power-sharing agreement, it was far better than approaches by most funders, which were more likely to provide all the funds to the northern institutions, which then sub-contracted projects to southern ones, he says.

“This really allowed substantial research to be done and led by institutions in the South, and there was no real power over other institutions. It’s much more equal,” he says. “With other research partnerships, the elite institutions get the grant and can stop or change the funding [to the southern institution]. There is a real power relation over other institutions.”

The Commission argues that while INCO-DEV has disappeared, a previously agreed upon schedule of payments prevents Northern institutions from using funds to exert influence over their Southern partners.

Criticism

Some researchers say that FP7 is less than appealing in other ways too.

According to Jeremy Farrar, director of the Vietnam Research Programme and Oxford University Clinical Research Unit based in Ho Chi Minh City, the EU’s grant application process is so bureaucratic that some of the best scientists opt instead for smaller, less onerous, national contributions.

“Things have improved significantly in the last few years, he says. “But it is still outrageously bureaucratic and it is handicapping Europe’s ability to be innovative. Kafka would be proud.”

Farrar points out that the time between applying for funds and receiving them can be as long as two years – far too long for developing quick responses to emerging infectious diseases. “The cutting edge of science cannot wait two years for a grant,” he says. “There has to be a better system”.

Secondly researchers complain about the EU’scumbersome reporting requirements, which they say oblige them to share precious funding with armies of accountants – an expense that is often out of proportion to the funds they receive.

And so onerous is the proposal writing process that some institutions have started outsourcing the job to private firms. This puts those institutions that cannot afford such an outlay at a disadvantage.

For its part, the EU says it has rigorous procedures in place to prevent corruption and is trying to minimize the bureaucracy. It also says scientists are welcome to submit proposal ideas for evaluation. This evaluation can give applicants an idea of whether it will be worth investing the time and money in developing a detailed proposal.

But other scientists worry about the content of calls. In particular, they are concerned that the development-related approach to research funding espoused by INCO-DEV is disappearing. For example, Southern institutions can no longer receive many of the grants available, because today’s rules say that consortia of at least three Northern institutions must apply for funding.

“Before, INCO-DEV was earmarked for development,” says Van Damme. “Now it is a sub-entity within wider health decisions. It has been marginalized. Some people are worried it will disappear altogether.”

The consortium approach

The EC likes the consortium approach to research funding because it does not want to duplicate research being done by individual member states. Rather, it wants to provide funding for projects that probably would not be supported nationally. That is why so much EU research funding concentrates on cooperation across national boundaries (and on translational research and product development that may require more partners than in basic research).

“The rule of consortia is one of the things that have been done extremely successfully by the [FP7] programme,” says DG Research’s Draghia-Akli. “Typically European scientists are all in their little boxes working on different things. Because of this cooperation programme, they are working together developing a European research-based added value.”

But Farrar worries that the consortium rule is misguided and results forces alliances that should come about naturally. “Encouraging people to working together is good but should not be forced,” he says. “I don’t think it should be at the heart of scientific funding because that should be driven by the quality of the science.”

Others comment that, like many organizations around the world, the EU’s focus has shifted towards seeing global health through the lens of security and threats to EU citizens. As evidence, they cite the Commission’s decision to close funding this year for HIV/AIDS and malaria in order to concentrate on antimicrobial resistance and emerging pandemics. Van Damme says: “We have pleaded for a ring-fenced budget for real poverty-related diseases and health systems research, rather than only emerging epidemics that may affect the citizens of Europe”.

Others complain that, in reality, only a fraction of the combined budget of Framework programmes is applied to global health. Of the €32.5 billion budget shared by FP5 and FP6, for instance, just €70 million went to 50 projects on neglected diseases.

The EU gave less to malaria research last year than the UK’s Wellcome Trust. It does not appear amongst the top 12 funders for diarrhoeal diseases, bacterial pneumonia and meningitis, despite the global burden of these diseases. It has languished in 10th place for dengue funding, trailing behind even Italy, an EU member state not known for its foreign aid generosity.

Whilst critics and unhappy with this situation, others argue that the EU represents the interests of 500 million people and that funds for research must reflect those interests. It also consults widely with the community about what should be included in research calls, and external experts vet all research proposals.

Global health

The EU’s contribution to global health far exceeds that supplied through framework programmes, including a third of GAVI’s public funding, and over half of that of the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS,Tuberculosis & Malaria, as well as WHO and TDR. It also has a separate budget for international development.

The Commission says it has closed calls for some research area this year so that new areas can be funded. Importantly, it allows more projects in a single area to be funded at the same time. “If you have more projects ongoing on a given theme, you have more results [emerging] at the same time from different approaches,” says Draghia-Akli. “Then researchers can exchange notes, all participate in international meetings and the field will move forward much faster”. Further calls for research funding on TB, malaria and HIV/AIDS will re-open next year, she adds.

There have also been calls to expand EDCTP beyond TB and malaria, to areas such as neglected diseases. Child and maternal health and funding for phase 1 trials are also proposed, rather than funding phase two and three trials only. A consultation on EDCTP’s future closed in June, and an independent expert group is currently considering proposals from member states and other experts. The group will present its findings at a conference in early October.

But as these minor tweaks to the FP7 are being discussed, broader strategic issues are now the subject of discussion as the EU approaches an important crossroads in its approach to global health R&D.

Specifically, the EU is devising a strategy on global health that encompasses research too. It is being seen as a groundbreaking approach to health. Marielle Hart, head of EU policy at Action for Global Health, a global consortium of health NGOs says, “The EU has never had an EU common strategy for global health. The strategy really emphasizes the common EU values of solidarity and equitable access to universal coverage of quality health services”.

The European Commission is considering plans to appoint the EU’s first ever global health coordinator later this year. The coordinator’s job, in theory, would be to implement a new EU approach to global health. A TropIKA.net article to be published shortly will look at this new development.

Reference

Lång H, Quaglio G, Olesen OF (2010). Tuberculosis research in the European Union: past achievements and future challenges. Tuberculosis (Edinb); 90(1):1-6. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19880350