20 May 2009

Boost to European public-private medical research


While skeptical about green shoots in the financial sector, I am happy to herald upbeat news that the EU is pledging more than 240 million euros towards a drug research project involving leading European pharmaceutical companies, academic research institutes and a handful of biotechnology companies.

Back in 2006 I worked for a research software company called Genedata (known affectionately as the University of Genedata, pictured left). The company had a deal to work with 15 European pharmaceutical companies (basically, all the major ones) to develop quantitative tools for predicting drug safety on the basis of whole-genome toxicology findings.

The pharmaceutical industry stumps up about a fifth of the world commercial research and development budget and Big Pharma in Europe contributes generously towards Europe's trade surplus in the technology sector (still very healthy in 2008).

So it is great to see convincingly green shoots!