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CHOP ‘Hot Topics’ Meeting

The 7th CHOP “Hot Topics” meeting was again held at the University of Manch ester’s Chancellors Conference Centre, on 28-29th April, at the invitation of Arthur Weston. As in previous years, Arthur’s enthusiastic involvement ensured that the business of the meeting was accompanied by good food and drink. Last year saw a highly successful first joint meeting of CHOP with the Committee of Heads of Physiology and, by popular demand, this was a repeat occasion, with Ian McGrath (Chair, Committee of Heads of Physiology) co-hosting the event with Brenda Costall (Chair of CHOP).

During the last year much has happened to influence the future funding of biomedical research. Both MRC and the Wellcome Trust have seen a change in leadership with accompanying reviews of policy and strategic directions. Then, in March this year, HEFCE published its consultation document on panel configuration and recruitment for RAE2008. Since our meeting, HEFCE has published its definitive list of Units of Assessments, which doesn’t exactly clarify where Pharmacology is likely to sit. The reinstatement of Pharmacy as a separate UoA is at least good news for the discipline. So, this year’s Hot Topics meeting was very timely, being focused largely on funding issues.

After dinner on the Wednesday evening, Dr Gillian Hawksworth, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, opened the meeting with the after-dinner speech on the changes and challenges facing the Pharmacy profession today, within a modern, integrated health care system. As a pharmacologist, with little professional contact with pharmacists, I gained the impression that the RPS is coming to grips with a need for it to be rather more than a regulatory and professional body for pharmacists. Dr Hawksworth’s commitment to a strong and independent pharmacy profession was very apparent. However, one couldn’t help thinking back to last year’s meeting, when the discussion focused on interdisciplinarity. Dr Hawksworth was asked why the RPS had not joined the other major biomedical societies in membership of the Biosciences Federation. Their membership would surely be of mutual benefit, particularly in relation to assisting in the formulation of public policy.

The following morning started with a presentation by Colin Blakemore, CEO of the MRC, fresh from his exhaustive (exhausting) road show around HEIs. To say that biomedical scientists welcome Colin’s fresh and open approach is somewhat understated. His identified priorities are young scientists, clinical research (but with extra money from government) and engagement with the public. In monetary terms, the target would be £100M extra funding in the next 4 years. Colin talked about the New Investigator Awards that are being trialled now. He wants to see young scientists being selected on the basis of track record and not on the minutiae of plans 3-5 years down the road. If they prove successful, NIAs are likely to be the model for the future, replacing the current Career Establishment Grants. There can be few people who were sorry to see the demise of the widely disliked Co-operative Group structure, that created, rather than removing, barriers for successful research. What should have been the essence of the Co-ops, i.e. fostering genuine collaborative efforts, has been embraced by new Collaborative Grants for which PIs can apply at any time up to 2 years left on a grant. What is striking is that the source of the PI’s funding may be from any body, not just MRC, and might be used for equipment, networking, workshops etc. Looking at what was specifically significant for Pharmacology and Physiology, there was a very clear message – integrative approaches, rather than reductionist; translating from bench to health outcomes, and better integration with other bodies and industry, with joint initiatives and links e g MRC/Wellcome integrative physiology initiative.

Colin was followed by Paul Burrows (Head of Science Strategy at BBSRC), who provided a valuable insight into the thinking of the Council. He emphasised that 45% (and increasing) of funding is response mode with only around 10% allocated to initiatives. Funding rate is still static at around 25%. Interestingly, BBSRC, like MRC, is moving strongly in the “functional genomics”, “integrative” or “systems” biology direction – call it what you will. The Council’s 10 year vision is towards “predictive biology” with the ability to model in silico biological events, i.e. high level predictive modelling and wet experimental testing in iterative cycles. For this to occur, a change in both culture and environment is required, and the RAE exercise in particular is viewed by BBSRC as an impediment to this. The Council sees a clear need to develop “Systems Biology Centres” in HEIs, providing an environment of high quality space, equipment, and facilities for data capture and manipulation. Their aim is to fund 3 centres in 04/05 at £5M a go, and the same in 05/06.

The last presentation before breaking for coffee was given by Sohaila Rastan, Director of Science Funding at the Wellcome Trust. The Trust has similarly embarked upon a path of considerable change, particularly because of its being (relatively) short of money to support research projects. Appointment of a new Director (Mark Walport) and Head of Strategic Planning (David Lynn) is clearly resulting in changes in the pipeline. Sohaila described how funding has previously been process driven and, in their times of plenty, without strategic direction. Evaluation of funding outcomes were ‘rudimentary and neglected’. The reorganisation of funding into 5 semi-independent streams is fairly close to what has gone before, except that each now has a strategy committee to determine priorities, and to consider outputs and outcomes of funded work, identifying opportunities and potential funding partners. It was striking how similar this model is to that being introduced by Colin within the MRC – taking a much more strategic view and devolving funding decisions to committees directly considering the quality of the science.

After coffee, we reconvened as break-out groups to discuss the issues raised, while the speakers oscillated between the groups. Several key issues were then brought back to the general forum for discussion. Funding of PhD programmes and their form (3 or 4 year) was a major concern – lack of studentships, inadequacy of running costs (at least £10K p.a. is needed for in vivo or molecular projects; the current £1K from the research councils is virtually useless). Wellcome Trust indicated that it will almost certainly renew its 4- year scheme that puts students more in control of their training by their rotating between potential supervisors. Paul Burrows indicated, somewhat guardedly, that BBSRC is reviewing the level of funding support for research that accompanies PhD studentships. It also appeared to be accepted by all that, with the requirement for widening graduate experience, 3 year programmes are going to be insufficient.

Another issue was that of full economic costing which hits all of us from next year. Sohaila re-emphasised what we knew already, i.e. that Wellcome (and other charities) would not pay overheads. However, in many instances they do so already – e.g. in their paying the fully-costed price for animals bred in house. Colin suggested that Wellcome might pay a proportion of the salary of the PI. Finally, there was some discussion as to how the research councils and Wellcome might assist with attracting people into in vivo research. This served as the perfect preamble to a short presentation by Mike Collis, who is co-ordinating the BPS/industrial initiative in Integrative Pharmacology, Physiology & Toxicology. This aims to provide matching funding (£25K per year over 5 years) to go with the newly created RCUK Academic Fellowships. Mike painted a stark picture of the reality – with billions spent on genome projects, reductionist approaches being dominant, we are faced with 30% of UK academic in vivo scientists retiring within the next 5 years or so. This year, only 8 university departments were providing any whole animal teaching at undergraduate level, and we were fast moving to a point where large pharmaceutical companies would have to provide all the training. Small companies would not even be able to start. As Mike eloquently expounded – the aim is to stop the rot and to support those Departments which have the depth and breadth of experience. More companies are being sought to become involved, in order to lever government support.

After lunch, Tom Sastry ( HEFCE), who served as secretary to Gareth Roberts’s committee on the future of the RAE, gave an overview of progress towards RAE2008. There were no real surprises in this as we, and our institutional masters, have avidly read the available HEFCE documentation. The subsequent discussion was rather more illuminating. The first question raised was, what about Neuroscience? Was this intended to represent Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology or all of Neuroscience? Tom’s answer to this was that ‘the expectation is that most of neuroscience will go under this UoA, but that HEIs will be influenced by the composition of panels. HEFCE’s aim is to provide a menu of options for flexibility’. These comments created something of a stir, considering that submissions under Neuroscience would potentially fractionate UoA14 (Preclinical Subjects - Anatomy, Physiology & Pharmacology) (N.B. this has now become UoA15 and is called Preclinical & Human Biology Studies).

Regarding the 0-4* profiling of UoA activities, it was emphasised that profiling is not of individuals. Tom expressed sur-prise at the comments of many Heads of Departments that their HEIs were already well advanced in doing precisely that. In contrast, HEFCE are anticipating submission of groups of individuals (3 or 4 being optimal) with shared outputs, partly to get away from the 1st author attitude to publications. The question of eligibility of contract staff (post docs) cf. independent research fellows was raised in view of the inconsistencies across HEIs in the last RAE. Apparently, this time there will be “clear criteria for eligibility based on an indivi-duals’ research role and not on their contractual position”. The final point of discussion related to the attitude of panels to young, yet to become established, researchers. It was noted that, in the last RAE, there had been negative comments where young people had been submitted with low outputs. It was reassuring to learn that “potential” will be recognised and that panels will be asked to look at the efforts of UoAs to ‘replenish the discipline and support young staff’. Panels will also not be permitted to mark down, where there is low productivity for obvious/good reasons. Finally, and entirely predictably, Tom declined to be drawn on any aspect of the monetary implications of profiling scores!

To finish off this very intensive Hot Topics meeting, we were treated to some real science, rather than science politics, with an exciting presentation by Dr Jimmy Bell (MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, at the IC Hammersmith Hospital Campus) on “Advances and Opportunities for in vivo Biological Imaging”. Although many of us knew a little about the applications of, say, PET (e.g. for imaging dopamine D2 receptors with raclo-pride), few of us were likely to have appreciated the enormous scope and potential for the plethora of imaging approaches that are now being used as non-invasive in vivo tools for functional genomic studies. Jimmy provided examples ranging from the use of MRI in studying metabolism/adiposity in mice; cell tracking, for example stem cells; monitoring of gene expression by PET, and bioluminescence studies in whole animal transgenic mice expressing the luciferase gene under control of, say, the oestrogen receptor. Whole animal (and human) high resolution imaging techniques that enable in situ activity measurements of disease candidate genes across the body’s systems are clearly the future. The Hammersmith still dominates molecular imaging in the UK and is a serious player on the international stage. However, such centralisation is not adequate and, hopefully, the realisation of the technology’s enormous potential will lead to investment in complementary facilities in the regions.

All in all, this was a very valuable and sociable event for pharmacologists and physiologists alike. Same place next year for more “hot topics”.

Peter Roberts
Secretary, Committee of Heads of Pharmacology.