Community access

Inspiring culture

Success breeds success

Building 310 on the Novartis Campus is currently being remodeled to host the FMI – the move is planned for 2023.

Science

Elements of scientific success

Serendipity is often mentioned as a driver of scientific success. But this elusive and rare muse aside, there are many rational elements that are considered crucial for progress. As Switzerland has partly dropped out of the prestigious European research program Horizon, a hard look at these fundamentals is warranted.

Text by Goran Mijuk, photos by Laurids Jensen and Adriano Biondo

Co-leaders of the Institute for Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel, Botond Roska...

Table of contents

Community access

Inspiring culture

Success breeds success

Published on 14/09/2022

When Switzerland was partly kicked out of the prestigious 95.5-billion-euro research program known as Horizon in 2021 after the country failed to reach a framework agreement with the European Union, the decision sent shockwaves through Switzerland’s science community. It was not only academic researchers who rang the alarm bell. Matthias Leuenberger, Country President of Novartis Switzerland and Chairman of the business association scienceindustries, went public to warn about the potential long-term negative consequences of this move.

While Leuenberger and Michael Hengartner President of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, urged the government to do everything to re-establish Switzerland’s full access to Horizon Europe, they also tried to formulate a fallback option: “As long as Switzerland is not associated with Horizon Europe, further measures are needed to maintain the excellence and competitiveness of the Swiss research and innovation hub,” they wrote in an open letter. “We call on the Federal Council to initiate these measures immediately and to allocate the corresponding funds for them.”

The strong wording was backed up with figures. Switzerland was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the previous EU funding program, Horizon 2020, through which the country’s researchers, especially small and medium-sized firms, received funds worth some 2.2 billion euros. Only grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, worth some 4.8 billion Swiss francs, topped this sum. The financing of hundreds of projects was at stake, Hengartner and Leuenberger warned.

But funding is not the only problem. While the search for alternative ways of financing is important, scientists say that, besides the financial loss, the access barrier to the European research community will be just as crippling because science depends as much on people as on money.

Quality science

Dirk Schübeler, Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel, which has been one of the most successful institutes in receiving the coveted European Research Council grants that are awarded as part of the program, says the partial exclusion from Horizon Europe “makes us very nervous.” Although the chances of ties being mended quickly are relatively low, he “hopes that this is a transient event.”

Above all, Schübeler is concerned that, even if Switzerland can provide academic researchers with extra funds, reviews of scientific projects, which are an important but little discussed part in the public debate about Horizon, will become another obstacle. “We cannot imagine this will go on forever, because it would be very difficult for Switzerland to copy this kind of program within the country, simply because science is so diverse and specialized,” he says.

The European Research Council has 25 different panels covering all areas of science to review research projects. “It’s much harder to do such reviews on a smaller scale like Switzerland, because there’s only going to be one or two groups working on a topic here. How could we find the experts to review them? So, there’s a certain size of community that is needed to get critical mass in judging quality of science.”

...and Hendrik Scholl.

Community access

Other scientists are equally concerned that being shut out of such a large and prestigious program will stymie the ability of researchers in Switzerland to forge ties with colleagues in Europe. Botond Roska, co-leader of the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), says that grants are not just coveted prizes that allow team leaders to attract talents. Another important element is community access.

“Some of the grants that are part of the European research program reflect a high level of excellence, which means that science group leaders can attract better researchers. Furthermore, what I experienced myself, is that you gain access to the research community and have a better understanding of what competitors are doing across Europe. These two factors, in my eyes, are even more important than the financing part.”

Many other scientists and public research figures have made similar comments in the months since Switzerland’s exclusion. So, we met with Dirk Schübeler, Botond Roska, IOB Co-Director Hendrik Scholl, and Michaela Kneissel from the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research to talk about what the Swiss scientific community can do to weather the effects of the crisis and what is needed to create centers of excellence.

Collaborative exploration

The four top researchers, who have carved a distinct career in their respective fields, are convinced that science can only make advances if people collaborate and pool individual skills in larger networks. This is true both for small and for large-scale companies, says Michaela Kneissel, who is aware that entire scientific fields can falter if basic questions, which can only be collaboratively explored, are shunned.

“Around 10 years or so ago, we saw the collapse of the osteoporosis field, which was mainly triggered by the fact that this particular research sector failed to address some fundamental challenges regarding clinical trials,” Kneissel remembers. “Although there were drugs available to treat the condition, the development of new medicines was hindered because clinical trials were prohibitively long, large and thus expensive. But since no one could address the underlying problem on their own, the field dried up.”

Kneissel says that the field had been aware of the problem, but that due to the size of the underlying challenge, no single company or institution was able to address it on its own. Yet, while the field is still smarting from this structural deficiency a decade later, the research community has learned a lot from this experience and is trying to address it through new research vehicles such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative, or IMI, which is working on the so-called Mobilise-D program aimed at defining new digital endpoints in the area of musculoskeletal diseases.

“In the area in which we are operating now, there are no pharmacologic interventions available, whether for osteoarthritis, tendinopathy, or some serious neuromuscular diseases. These fields are in fact so underserved that you cannot just make a medicine, and then the whole thing is taken care of. These fields need to be developed globally by the entire research community,” Kneissel says. “And this is what we are doing in part in the Mobilise-D program, to establish endpoints that can help us develop new trials and medicines.”

Megaprograms such as Horizon Europe are ideal for such industry-wide endeavors, Kneissel explains, because researchers from different domains need to work together with regulatory experts as well as with patients and other stakeholders. It is a major advantage, she says, that Novartis, which is part of and in a leading role for Mobilise-D, can continue working on these projects through its association with the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).

While Novartis per se is not directly affected by Switzerland’s partial exclusion from Horizon Europe since it sponsors its own research, Kneissel cautions that it is crucial that Switzerland’s academic centers will be allowed to participate fully in the Horizon Europe program, since the erosion effects will only be felt over time as talented young scientists might choose workplaces outside Switzerland – a challenge that is well understood at the IOB, the FMI and many other academic centers.

Michaela Kneissel from the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

Inspiring culture

While efforts are underway to help Switzerland gain full access to Horizon Europe, research leaders keep focusing on their strength. After all, Switzerland is one of the leading research destinations worldwide, having produced more than 20 Nobel Prize winners so far. Its pharmaceutical sector is one of the world’s most robust with investments worth almost 7 billion Swiss francs. The Basel region alone is home to more than 600 life sciences and biotechnology firms, including Roche and Novartis.

Given the pharmaceutical sector’s huge importance in terms of value and job creation, Dirk Schübeler hopes not only that the Swiss government will change course in future, but also that the peculiar mindset and collaborative approach at leading Swiss research institutions such as the FMI will be instrumental in continuing to attract top talents from the rest of the world.

The FMI, which can look back on a 50-year history, is a sort of blueprint of collaborative science since the institute was founded out of the need to create touching points between industry and academia. “Our institute was created to be at the forefront of science from its inception and was really built to test out new scientific approaches and to funnel ideas into drug discovery,” says Dirk Schübeler. “Today, we are still dedicated to our mission of understanding the molecular basis of health and disease – in our current research areas of genome regulation, multicellular systems and neurobiology.”

This has also shaped the FMI’s culture as well as its appeal to scientists around the world: “Our mindset is always directed towards the future,” Schübeler says in summing up the spirit at the FMI. “The real question is not what you’ve done, but what you are going to do. What makes a research place attractive for a researcher is the opportunity to do the best possible science. Of course, this requires technology, space and money. But it definitely requires an intellectually stimulating environment as well.”

Attracting talent

The ability to attract talents is also considered crucial. “If you are around very good people, you will become better. It’s the same as in sports. You will improve. If you see quality around you, if you have stimulating discussions and people who challenge you and take you out of your comfort zone, that is really what creates a great environment,” Schübeler says, adding that, for him, the FMI is just such a place. “Personally, I’ve been super happy with the research progress made within my lab. I cannot tell you how much of that we would have been able to achieve somewhere else. That’s the best you can say about a place. Eventually it all comes down to the fact that scientists are looking for an environment in which they have the best chances of succeeding.”

Botond Roska and Hendrik Scholl would agree with the above, especially when it comes to attracting talent. But grabbing opportunities when they pop up and bringing complementary research under one roof is equally important, they say. In fact, the creation of the IOB would have been impossible without Novartis Chairman Joerg Reinhardt, who asked Scholl, one of the world’s leaders in clinical ophthalmology, and Roska, a hard-boiled lab scientist and the 2020 winner of the Körber European Science Prize, to work together and set up the IOB with the University of Basel and the University Hospital of Basel to drive innovation in the eye disease space.

“I’m genuinely opportunity-driven. And it didn’t need much imagination or insight to recognize the opportunity when I was asked to join Botond to form the IOB,” Scholl says, adding that to be aligned on problem-solving is, however, also an element of scientific excellence. “There needs to be a common interest, for example, to target the same problems. And you also need complementary expertise. This was ideal in our case. Due to this confluence of elements, we had a compelling story to tell. And we could show a clear path forward as to how we would tackle important conditions that have a real impact on patients’ lives.”

Dirk Schübeler, Director of the FMI.

Success breeds success

“And I think we identified and created the story. This positive excitement was then realized by others, who made an investment in IOB to develop new therapies for currently untreatable conditions. This is what we have been working on for almost four years now and, I would say, very successfully so far. This could only have happened in the environment we have here. Would it have happened in another environment? Maybe, you can speculate. But most likely not. It needed all these ingredients,” Scholl explains.

In fact, just four years after the IOB was created, the institute was able to show that its optogenetic method helped restore partial vision in a blind patient, an achievement that created a huge stir within the research community and the general public and helped the IOB gain the status it envisioned at its outset.

While Roska and Scholl, like Schübeler and Kneissel, hope that Switzerland will be able to rejoin Europe’s flagship program, they are all aware that competition is accelerating and that, when it comes to innovation, there is a winner-takes-all reality that pervades science. Hence, creating centers of excellence that are known in the rest of the world is a must.

“Competition is increasing in all fields,” Roska says. “So, you have to optimize every single component of your work, be it the alignment in terms of goals or the hiring of a talented student. Every little advantage helps. During my career, I wanted to work with the best, and this is what we have at the IOB, both on the molecular and the clinical side. I believe this searching for top talents should be the mindset for IOB and other leading institutes.”

You may also be interested in the following:

Back to the main page

18.09.2022

Measuring mobility

The long road to new clinical endpoints.

17.08.2022

On the shoulders of crowds

The work of 8 million scientists.

Elements of scientific success

Your privacy is important for us.

Strictly necessary cookies

Performance cookies

Functional cookies

Targeting cookies