Trends in medicine
Urs Frey, president of the Biology and Medicine division at the SNSF, outlines future trends in medical research. He is medical director at the University Children’s Hospital Basel and a clinician with experience in paediatric and juvenile illnesses and pathophysiology.
Dr Frey, where is medical research headed and what trends can you see?
As life expectancy increases, the development of regenerative therapeutic strategies, for example for degenerative disorders and cancer, will gain in importance. Research into rare diseases is also on the upswing. Illnesses caused by environmental influences, malnutrition or psychosocial pressures are affecting ever larger population groups and pushing up healthcare costs. In future, medicine will be heavily geared to researching these complex conditions, which include asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes and Alzheimer’s, and finding ways of preventing and treating them. As a result of the complex interaction between genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors, such diseases can manifest themselves very differently from one person to the next. They are investigated in large patient groups with the aim of developing a treatment that is tailored to the individual patient (what is known as “personalised medicine”).
What general prerequisites are needed for optimal medical research?
Internationally networked basic research and technology development – both particular strengths of Switzerland – are essential for good medical research. Lean and uniform nationwide regulatory requirements and access to the large-scale, high-quality clinical databases and tissue banks that are being set up at various hospitals will make it easier to carry out translational and multicentre trials.
What specific tasks will this involve for research and clinical research in particular?
Interdisciplinary and translational collaboration between biologists and doctors, for example incorporating modern “-omics” technologies, forms the basis for evidence-based medicine. Training young doctors to do research and ensuring that time is available for it are important prerequisites for high-quality clinical research.
How is the SNSF supporting these developments?
The SNSF is supporting clinical research through a series of concerted measures. Clinicians have access to all the career funding schemes provided by the SNSF, and the eligibility requirements are adapted to the clinical curriculum. The Protected Research Time for Clinicians scheme guarantees that young clinicians will be able to spend at least 30% of their time researching their projects, and there are also competence and service centres in the form of the Swiss Clinical Trial Organisation and its six Clinical Trial Units. The Swiss Biobanking Platform is designed to promote data quality and coordination among local biobanks. The longitudinal studies (cohort studies) provide high-quality long-term data for interested researchers. The new Investigator Initiated Clinical Trials programme enables researchers to carry out large-scale clinical trials without having to rely on industry support.