BioWorld International Correspondent

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European pharmaceutical industry has taken over a life sciences database from the European Union, with the intention of making it self-financing.

The Life Competence database is an online network and knowledge-sharing contact system listing nearly 600 research projects in health care biotechnology that have been funded by the EU Commission. It enables companies, universities and nongovernmental organizations to see what research is under way in their area and to identify partners, companies and universities working in their field. It also enables companies and academia to keep track of the EU projects their organization is involved in or on what their competitors are doing.

EuropaBio, the European biotech industry association, has set up a collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and a German research consultancy Avedas to make the Life Competence database platform available to anyone interested in life sciences and health research in Europe. The goal is to make access to the database one of the services offered to patients as part of the patient advisory group project that EuropaBio is starting to set up.

The development cost of the database has been funded by the EU for the last two years, but the aim now is to create a self-sustaining financial structure with industry support. Access to the system and its reports are free through March 31. It contains details of projects ranging from heritability of chronic neuropathic disorders to the work of the European Vascular Genomics Network, and from molecular mechanisms of neuronal degenerative disease to the NeuroDisseminator project, which aims at creating functional maps of the human cerebral cortex by analyzing PET and MRI studies.

EMEA Moving to Electronic Submissions

The European Medicines Agency has unveiled plans for a phased approach to the acceptance of electronic-only applications in support of marketing-authorization applications for biotechnology and other high-tech medicines. Its planned milestones are that after July 1, 2008, it will accept electronic-only submissions, and from Jan. 1, 2009, it will "strongly recommend" electronic-only submissions. Furthermore, from July 1, 2009, the EMEA will "strongly recommend" that the electronic-only submissions should be in the standardized format recently agreed at European level.

GM Crops Controversy Continues

Europe's intense feuding over GM crops continues, with Italian farmers the latest entrants to the debate. A poll organized by the Italian biotech association, Assobiotec, showed that 67 percent of maize growers in Lombardy, the country's principal maize growing region, said they would be ready to cultivate GMOs immediately if they were given the chance. Also, 74 percent favor running field trials of GMOs in Italy to better understand the benefits.

The survey, among 532 farms, "shows that the farmer base in Lombardy is open to innovation and biotechnology," said Elisabetta Brambilla, the survey coordinator. According to more than 80 percent of maize growers, "It is absurd to ban the cultivation of GMOs while allowing their import for feed." More than 75 percent "feel unfairly penalized compared with farmers operating in other countries," and consider GMOs "an innovative agricultural instrument." The vast majority said farmers should be given the freedom to choose what to produce.

"The survey offers an insight into our agricultural sector that is very different from the depiction by many Italian politicians and agricultural associations who are clearly pursuing a prejudiced and ideological opposition to GMOs," said Assobiotec President Roberto Gradnik.