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Switzerland has a long history of success in the life sciences.
The Alpine nation is the base for several multinational
pharmaceutical firms and boasts a network of first rate
universities and technical schools. But the fact that Switzerland
is small in terms of both geography and population has begun to
raise doubts that it can continue to maintain the highest quality
of life science research against strong competition from larger
nations. The Swiss federal government, along with industrial and
academic leaders, has moved to quell those doubts by encouraging
extension of a characteristic already ingrained in the Swiss
scientific character: collaboration. Government departments,
academic centers, industrial research organizations, and private
research institutions have started to pool their resources in
collaborative research projects designed to ensure that high
quality life science research – along with top-notch life
scientists – remains in Switzerland.
The collaborative initiatives will plainly take time to produce
dividends. But observers are optimistic that they will succeed.
“Switzerland still lags behind in the collaboration between
universities and industry, with a historical and reciprocal
defiance,” says Pierre Spierer, dean of the faculty of science and
professor in the department of zoology and animal biology at the University of Geneva. “But the
focus of research of both academia and industry is becoming closer
with the development of genetics in a broad sense, and the
situation is improving rapidly.” Lutz-Peter Berg, a science attaché in the Swiss Embassy in London,
agrees. “Like everywhere in Europe, the attitudes within
universities are changing, and the recent success for Swiss startup
companies tells me that the environment is good for
academic-industrial relationships,” he says.
Sufficient Size
Hanns Möhler, former director of the Institute of Pharmacology and
Toxicology at the University of Zurich and Zurich’s Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH), outlines the problem. “One of the
critical points one would have to look at in the long run is
whether life science projects in Switzerland are sufficient in size
and scope to promote industry in Switzerland,” he explains. As a
specific example of the concern he notes that Novartis, the giant
pharmaceutical firm based in Basel, recently shifted its focus of
R&D to Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Does that mean that Novartis
is changing its emphasis away from Switzerland, even though it is
also expanding in Basel?” Möhler asks. “The move contributed to an
ongoing appraisal of the research landscape with the aim of
promoting industrial investment in Switzerland.”
In part, Novartis’s move stemmed from fear that the underlying
basis of Swiss life science was in decline. “We in industry, and
also people in academia, have a sense that the infrastructure has
kind of lagged,” says Paul Herrling, head of corporate research.
“At a time when the United States National Institutes of Health
trebled its budget, the Swiss National Science Foundation’s budget
has stagnated. We’re trying to persuade the government to arrest
the stagnation that has gone on too long.”
The government has already made moves to arrest the decline.
Starting in 2001, for example, it set up a series of what it calls
National Centers of Competence in Research (NCCRs). “The whole
philosophy is to put together competence that would otherwise be
kept isolated,” says Pierre Magistretti, co-director of the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology’s (EPFL’s) Brain Mind Institute.
Susan Gasser, director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for
Biomedical Research (FMI), outlines the goals of the NCCRs. “They
don’t replace the core funding or the core support from the
institutes that they involve, but they provide that extra appeal to
attract new people and to allow a few individuals to do something
beyond what the standard funding would allow,” she says.
A Recipe Book
Möhler’s institute in Zurich illustrates the scope of research
supported by the program. “We are involved in the NCCR
neuroscience, which translates advances in basic neuroscience into
new therapies of disorders of the central nervous system," he says.
“We have come up with a whole recipe book of validated targets for
drug development that industry can choose from. Several companies
have picked it up and are developing agents along those lines. In
addition, the NCCR neuroscience projects of Martin Schwab of the
Brain Research Institute and Roger Nitsch of the University of
Zurich’s Division of Psychiatry Research have entered clinical
development for the treatment of spinal cord injury and Alzheimer’s
disease, respectively.”
Initial impressions suggest that the centers have started
successfully. “They have been very effective at stimulating the
life sciences by funding top academic scientists and allowing them
to develop collaborative projects,” Spierer says. “They have
provided an enormous stimulus in a few selected areas,” adds Isabel
Roditi, director of the University of Berne’s Institute of Cell
Biology. “They will have long-term impact, as those funded so far
have had their second four-year funding approved. Universities are
establishing chairs as an indirect result of the process; this will
have an impact 20 years from now.”
The concept also promises to change the basic approach to
research. “The very good thing about the initiative is that it has
added a dimension to the individual principal investigator–based
research concept, particularly with collaborations across areas of
competence,” says Michel Aguet, director of the Swiss Institute for
Experimental Cancer Research. “The centers not only go across
disciplines; they also cover larger areas in the same discipline,
going from the laboratory to medical usage, for example.”
Systems X and Others
Another stimulus for collaborative research focuses on a form of
life science that, by its very nature, involves collaboration. “The
Systems X initiative plans a national network on systems biology,”
Spierer says. “Its important financing by the pharma industry is
the stamp of future success.” The initiative builds on research
already under way at the Zurich ETH and the universities of Basel
and Zurich. The network could extend in the future to the Lausanne
Federal Institute of Technology and other major universities. “It
is expected to provide an additional boost and increase the
strength of the scientific network between more loosely active
groups at different places,” says Klaus Müller, head of science and
technology relations at F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche).
A different federal organization, the Commission for Technology
and Innovation (CTI), sets out to promote R&D projects that
involve public-private partnerships. “Its role is to assure an
efficient and result-oriented transfer of knowledge between
universities and industries; its objective is to bring science to
market,” Nestlé’s Peter van Bladeren explains.
Other large-scale forms of collaboration have begun on a
regional basis. These include the Zurich MedNet, which brings
together academic research units and businesses in the greater
Zurich area; BioAlps, which combines organizations along the lake
shore between Geneva and Lausanne; and BioValley, a multinational
collaborative that involves universities and companies in northwest
Switzerland, southwest Germany, and eastern France.
Another network involves a field that by its nature involves
collaboration among disciplines. The Swiss Institute of
Bioinformatics, a network of institutions in Basel, Geneva,
Lausanne, and Zurich, hosts several databases, including the
SWISS-PROT protein database.
Industrial
Experience
Individual firms and universities have set up their own
collaborative research enterprises. An initiative in systems
biology that pharmaceutical firm Novartis started with the
Universities of Basel and Zurich and the Zurich ETH illustrates the
value of the collaborative approach. “The goal was to increase the
predictability of our drug discovery,” Herrling explains.
“Universities were highly interested in this project, as it’s the
next step for them to understanding life. Both academic and
industrial researchers were very keen on getting started on systems
biology pathways. This combination of academic and industrial
laboratories helps to keep Switzerland at the leading edge of
science in competing with the rest of the world.”
The Nestlé Research Center provides other examples of
academic-industry cooperation in life science research. “We
collaborate actively with several universities and Swiss federal
institutes of technology,” van Bladeren says. “One interesting
example is our long-term collaboration with EPFL for the creation
and co-financing of a research group in sensory neurosciences. This
group is focused on the mechanisms that allow the brain to
integrate the various sensorial signals, one of the major
challenges that neurobiology faces.”
Roche has its own example. “Collaborations with Swiss academia
have always been important to us,” Müller says. “We have recently
set up a large-scale collaboration in systems biology that focuses
on pancreatic beta cells, suspected of playing a crucial role in
the different stages of diabetes, with the University of Zurich and
the Zurich ETH. We have collaborations also with the IBM Research
Institute on novel miniaturized assays based on IBM’s surface
micro/nano-structuring competence. And together with Novartis and
the Max Planck Society, we operate a special beamline at the Paul
Scherer Institute for structural biology.”
From Academia to Private Institutions
Academic institutions have also started to develop their own
large-scale collaborative projects. “An important move at the
national level is the collaborative program of the University of
Geneva, the University of Lausanne, and the Lausanne ETH,” Geneva’s
Spierer says. “As a result, the schools of pharmacy of Geneva and
Lausanne were fused and located in Geneva, and Lausanne Federal
Institute has absorbed the divisions of chemistry, physics,
mathematics, and informatics from the University of Lausanne, and
an Institute of Genomics has been created in Lausanne by the three
institutions. Achieved last fall, this was the first large
restructuring of the landscape of higher education in Switzerland.
It is the prototype of future moves, in particular in the
Zurich-Basel region.”
Similarly, private research institutions emphasize collaborative
projects. “Probably 50 percent of our research is collaborative –
maybe 25 percent with Novartis and 25 percent with academia,” FMI’s
Gasser says. “We are very open to exchange.”
As those examples show, collaboration is hardly foreign to Swiss
academic and industrial institutions. “Most definitely there is a
culture of collaboration,” Gasser points out. “Our institute,
funded by the Novartis Research Foundation, has funding
opportunities specifically earmarked for industry-academic
collaborations. We have about 100 graduate students who go back and
forth between academia and industry-funded research institutes. If
the cross-feeding starts early with the students, you know it will
continue.” What is new is the focus on larger-scale collaborations
that span several fields, move well along the chain between bench
and bedside, and aim for commercial results. “There is already a
long tradition of collaboration between universities, research
institutes, and industry – for example, in the pharma sector or in
engineering,” the Swiss Embassy’s Berg says. “But of course, Swiss
research institutions are currently putting a lot of effort into
optimizing technology transfer.”
No Firm Can Do It All
From the pharmaceutical industry’s point of view, the increased
focus on collaboration marks a recognition that no firm, however
large, can undertake all the research it needs to create new drugs.
“The basic research we are not doing in-house has to happen in
academic labs,” explains Novartis’s Herrling. “The only way to be
on top of that and to learn is to collaborate with the academics.
You need an interactive team of your own scientists working with
them; if you just give them money and come back in five years, you
won’t understand what’s happening. So interacting with academia is
very much a fundamental aspect of our strategy.”
Cooperative research doesn’t stop at the border. “I have had two
long collaborations with the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel and
the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine in Berne,”
says Roditi of the Institute of Cell Biology. “I have also
collaborated with institutes in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and
the United States.” FMI integrates from the inside. “Our institute
has a very international character. We have very few graduate
students from Switzerland; most are foreigners,” Gasser says. “This
exchange of people, ideas, and material is true of Switzerland in
general; it’s a very open research community. For Switzerland to
survive, it has to collaborate. That opened a tradition.”
The developing tradition of extra support for collaborative
research strikes a particular chord in translational research,
which involves cooperation between scientists in the laboratory and
the clinic. “Our branch in Lausanne is totally dedicated to
immunology, from very basic research to how the immune system
develops through to how it functions,” the Ludwig Institute’s
MacDonald explains. “We go from basic research to patients – a nice
mixture to have in one organization. We can legitimately say that
our research covers the area from bench to bedside, which is
unusual for a small institute with fewer than 40 people.”
The Emergence of Translational Medicine
Aguet of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research takes
a similar view. “Translational medicine is getting very important,”
he says. “We have a good reputation in basic research on cell
cycles and cell division. Now we have a major effort in genomic
stability, telomerase, and development pathways in cancer. Based on
these themes, we wanted to move to medically oriented research. We
have moved to cooperate with the local hospital in investigating
tumors and cell migration – major aspects of tumor biology that
need tumor pathology.”
Like other institutions, Aguet’s institute seeks scientists
prepared to work on collaborative projects. “We will be in
partnership with the Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich and
Lausanne, so we are hiring more aggressively,” Aguet says. “We are
looking for junior and senior people starting now in cancer
research. We need to have both very strong basic researchers and
researchers with a genuine interest in getting close to the clinic.
But it is more difficult to find competent people in the transition
field.”
Elsewhere, EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute has openings in cellular
neurobiology and neuropharmacology. “And we have strong development
in computational modeling for neuroscience, as illustrated by the
Blue Brain supercomputer project,” Magistretti says. Roditi’s team
at the University of Berne plans soon to recruit Ph.D.s and
postdocs with training in cell biology, molecular biology, and
biochemistry. In industry, says van Bladeren, “Nestlé is moving
from being a ‘respected and trustworthy food company’ to being a
‘respected and trustworthy food, nutrition, health, and wellness
company.’” That means recruitment of “young and more senior
scientists for all our departments in all major areas, from
behavioral sciences to life sciences, and from quality and safety
to food technology,” van Bladeren continues.
A Feel for Collaboration
Collaborative research obviously demands scientists with a bent
toward cooperation. “Collegiality and communication skills are
important, along with great curiosity in research,” Roditi points
out. “In addition, you should not have fixed opinions in advance
and you should retain the ability to be surprised.” Gasser agrees
that “communication skills in any way, shape, or form are essential
for our recruits. And above all I look for creativity; I want the
bright ideas.”
Heiko Bruhn, deputy head of human resources in Roche’s Basel
office, outlines the typical qualities that Swiss industry seeks in
its scientific recruits. “The training should be in depth in a
given discipline, such as chemistry, biology, pharmacology, or
medicine, but broad and cross-disciplinary so that candidates are
fit for the challenging multidisciplinary nature of our modern
pharmaceutical research,” he says. “Optimally, training should be
performed within the contexts of frontier research projects. In the
future we will look for people with M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. This
‘double education’ will help researchers to find the right answers
in medicine as well as to understand the methodology of
science.”
Nationality is relatively unimportant to Swiss recruiters. “We
recruit a number of junior scientists, mostly Swiss who have gone
abroad for postdocs and have done well,” the Ludwig Institute’s
MacDonald says. “We also have a lot of German and French
scientists. The big attraction is limited responsibility outside
research. They have virtually no teaching responsibilities; that
especially attracts young people.” And English speakers who worry
about the need to communicate in other languages need fear no more.
FMI provides a typical example. “In Switzerland the scientific
language is English,” Gasser says. “The whole institute speaks
English. I’ve hardly spoken German since I came here from the
University of Geneva a year ago.”
Spreading the Word
The Swiss government, meanwhile, continues to promote its support
of collaborative research. “It is stepping up its efforts to keep
Swiss science globally connected by setting up a network of
international science and technology offices and dedicated ‘science
consulates’ around the world,” says Berg of the London Embassy.
Their objective: “To facilitate international collaboration and
mobility.”
A former science editor ofNewsweek,Peter Gwynne (
pgwynne767@aol.com ) covers
science and technology from his base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
U.S.A.
DOI: 10.1126/science.opms.r0600002
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