Translational medicine

As Europe entered the 21st century, now already a few years ago, the WHO Regional Office for Europe had no option but to warn that there could be a health crisis unless radical steps were taken by the public, professions, industry and governments of the region.

Cancer, heart disease, the self destructive urge of the smoker, the drinker and the drug abuser, the effects on mind and body of the stress of work or lack of it, together with the accident epidemic, plunder our lives and drain our financial resources.

This sheer social and economic madness is diverting the resources that need to be spent on education, chronic diseases of old age and in rehabilitating our handicapped and mentally ill.

We have to be careful that in our task to develop the glittering attraction of high technology and in satisfying public demand for the development of enormously expensive technology we need to honestly assess whether we are tricking ourselves in neglecting the present great plagues of mankind: substance abuse, HIV-AIDS and obesity.

The excitement in the advent of the new state-of-the-art hospital for acute diseases must not divert us to abandon the principle of self-care in a caring community.

The weapon that exists to fight the dangerous course that our society has taken, rests in education. The University responded to the WHO's warning of 20 years ago by adding to its prestigious Medical and Dental Faculties, the Institute of Health Care and a number of other institutes in different caring fields such as gerontology and not least by expanding the social sciences such as psychology and sociology.

However, it seems that the need for excellence in the health field has stopped short of government realising the need for funds to develop research and innovation in these areas.

The establishment and development of the Psychology department fell short of educating the large number of psychologists required for our need and left us with some of the graduates in psychology being only half-baked professionals with a degree that does not qualify them to be registered as clinical psychologists.

Can one imagine the disastrous results if the same faculty had to award a B.Educ. to the majority of its graduates, which however does not qualify them for a warrant to teach?

The attention given to our present major health problems such as drug abuse and obesity are minimal. The University must start carrying out in earnest the most important research that studies how the individual and the community tend to have ignored health, and how one could promote health and prevent illness.

If we are to avoid the crisis to our health and social fabric through the plagues that are hitting us, such as drug abuse and obesity, it is now that we have to start intensive research how to make radical changes in the way health is won and medical care provided.

Last week Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science Robert Plasterik spoke to an audience of pharmaceutical scientists, researchers, academics and their peers at the Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress in Amsterdam.

Dr Plasterik, himself a distinguished and accomplished molecular and developmental biologist, brought attention to the growing duty of current and future pharmaceutical scientists to meet the needs and demands of today's world.

He stated that the world needs new drugs and more scientists should face the challenge to spend their life and talents to find these drugs. He also stated that more health workers must be educated in different and innovative ways to meet the future needs of healthcare.

The necessity of translational medicine - a branch of medical research that attempts to connect basic research more directly to patient care - bridging the gap between the development of new knowledge, and the application of that knowledge to real global health threats, was emphasised.

The representative of the pharmaceutical industry, David Nicholson, explained at the same meeting the need for translational medicine and focused on collaborative efforts in bringing new chemical entities and lead drugs into the pipeline, drugs that move beyond the Phase 2 clinical trials.

Dr Thomas Lönngren, executive director of EMEA, brought the regulatory aspect into view as well and stressed the need for collaboration between regulatory, academic and industrial branches to follow common paths and work together to bring new potential medicines into the pipeline, those that will be essential to meet the health care demands of an expanding, aging population with health care needs to match.

Malta has also been invited to actively participate in these research needs. Work has already started, which could make the University a centre for clinical trials. The most significant stumbling block to this development is the enormous bureaucracy that is present in our administration, be it at the university or orchestrated by the health authorities.

The worse culprits are the large numbers of committees and bureaucrats that one must overcome to obtain the necessary authorisations to embark on the research studies. While one understands that safety is of paramount importance, can we not have a one-stop shop rather than moving applications from one committee to another, each raising a fresh stumbling block for every project?

Is it possible that communication between persons is so difficult that all concerned cannot meet around a table and iron out the difficulties that discourage efforts towards establishing a strong research base in innovation and development in the vast health sciences area?

One augurs that such consensus will be reached and that Malta would excel in meeting the challenges for developments in the health area.