Poland looks to spur translation of its medical research

Poland’s medical researchers have plenty of good ideas and the intellectual capacity to pursue them, but they are having a hard time translating research outputs into the clinic.

The reasons behind this are varied, but delegates at last month’s Pharma Day in Warsaw agreed: what the country needs right now is to come up with strategies for spurring more international collaboration.

The meeting, organised by the Medical University of Warsaw and BASTION, a project set up to reduce the time from scientific discovery to clinical application, brought together top Polish medical scientists and biotech companies to discuss how to stimulate translational research in oncology and enhance cooperation between science and industry.

Stimulating translational research

In addition to EU funding, Poland has several national funding mechanisms designed to stimulate translational research, noted Izabela Rzepczyńska, deputy head of unit at the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (NCBiR). Ultimately, it is up to medical researchers to brave the step of applying for funds through these mechanisms, she said.

The national strategy programme, Strategmed, which is just about to launch its second call this year, offers the opportunity of getting access to the big money, and for building consortia between academia and industry representatives. Another important programme, Innomed, is offering funding opportunities for science and industry collaborations. Thirty five per cent of its total budget of €72 million comes from industry,  and its first call was launched  last year.

However, researchers and academics complain about the quality of evaluation in these programmes. Zbigniew Gaciong, head of Internal Medicine, Hypertension and Vascular Diseases, at the Medical University of Warsaw said, “Many projects do not have innovative potential and won’t have any patents as an output. Many papers in high-impact journals yes, but not much innovation will come out of them. There will be no translation and no commercial benefits.”

Magda Chlebus, Director of Science Policy at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, argued that basic science is relevant as well. “Not all science must be innovative or with commercial potential. Basic science is not about innovation but it plays an enabling role”, Chlebus said.

A more active role for the government

Piotr Rutkowski, Director Representative for Clinical Trials at Maria Sklodwoska-Curie Memorial Cancer Centre and Institute of Oncology, highlighted the mismatch between the number of clinical trials run by academia and the number of trials sponsored by the industry.  “Unfortunately in Poland we have only commercially-sponsored trials,” he said.

In 2013 there was only one academic clinical trial in the field of oncology  registered in Poland, while in the EU as a whole, 40 percent of clinical trials are academic.

“We should promote and facilitate more clinical trials coming from academia, because the best ideas come from there,” Rutkowski said.

The Polish Ministry for Health should allocate funds and offer legal support for academic clinical trials, which are easier and cheaper to perform than industry-sponsored trials, Rutkowski suggested.

International collaboration – Poland’s weak point

Jakub Golab, BASTION project coordinator and head of the Department of Immunology at MUW, said, “Poland should put greater focus on developing infrastructures to facilitate collaborations with more advanced research institutes in Europe and to bring more experienced researchers into the country.” While BASTION has an impressive track record, with two patent applications for new diagnostic tools in oncology, and 74 peer-reviewed articles published since 2012, that is not enough to get the industry more interested in investing.

Patryk Mikucki, Hub Director for Study Management and Operations at AstraZeneca, said research in Poland is impressive, but from the perspective of a big pharmaceutical company, Poland is not the favourite place in which to invest in research. “In order to be successful internationally, Poland has to choose a niche where it can be the best and the research community needs to build a common voice and to be perceived as one group,” Mikucki said.

Money is not the biggest problem. Before even thinking about funding, Poland has to create functional interfaces between academia and the industry, Mikucki told the meeting. “Local biotech companies can in some ways act as an interface between academia and big pharma, but people need to forget for a while about personal conflicts and come together as one group,” he said.

Precarious IP management

Collaboration certainly does not happen overnight, and there are obstacles that make it hard for biotech companies to get involved in partnerships, said Wojciech Czardybon, head of Discovery Chemistry at Selvita. “The biggest obstacle in the way of industry-academia collaborations is the lack of basic knowledge about IP protection,” he said.

Universities should take further steps in training students and researchers in the basics of IP protection and protect potentially valuable results. Companies automatically lose interest in investing in a project with an unclear IP position.

It is vital to teach students about IP and to develop mechanisms for improving IP protection, Czardybon said.

Marcin Szumowski, CEO and President of OncoArendi Therapeutics, echoed this. “Even though more and more researchers understand IP protection issues and some of them are doing a good job of protecting their IP, there are a lot of cases where these functions are run by assistant lawyers or by the legal departments of universities and this is not very effective,” Szumowski said.

Poland has the building blocks, but it will take time to put them together

In a short period of time Poland has made a giant leap forward, thanks to NCBiR, the National Science Council and units within universities which are committed to transferring IP to the market and commercialising it. “Both science and industry are becoming more and more successful, but they can do more,” said Gaciong. Overall, there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of science-industry collaboration but perhaps there is a need to move faster, because certainly the west is not going to wait for Poland to catch up.

In order to become an international success, Poland has to speak a common voice and keep the ideas flowing, otherwise it will be hard to attract big international money.

You can find more details about the BASTION project by clicking here or by sending an email to Karolina Dzwonek, Innovation Manager at BASTION.