EU support for genome projects

The European Commission is negotiating contracts worth 19.4 millioneuros ($17.0 million) with the European Bioinformatics Institute and other leading centers to develop a new generation of bioinformatics tools to enable faster and more comprehensive access to a range of data from genes to molecules.

Peter Kind, acting director of health resources at the Commission, said it is imperative for Europe to ensure its competitiveness in this field if it does not want to become merely a customer for technologies developed elsewhere, and a consumer of products and services provided by competitors.

The Commission has noted that, whereas the US National Institutes of Health spent about 300 million euros last year to support bioinformatics projects, public investment in Europe hardly reached 100 million euros in 2000, including the EBI budget of 10 million euros. The Commission earlier launched the Genomes for Human Health initiative with a budget of 25 million euros, and the current projects represent the first European Union support for research infrastructures to underpin work on post-genomics databases and suitable animal models for human health.