Munich

In Italy, scientific initiatives tend to change with governments. But prime minister Giuliano Amato's new administration has retained a plan to launch strategic research programmes in human genomics and neuroscience.

Only days before the previous government fell last month, it issued a decree setting up two national committees to define the strategies. The decree was the brainchild of Vincenzo Sica, undersecretary of state for research, who has been reappointed to his position.

The committees, which met for the first time earlier this week, will put forward both scientific and financial proposals. If all goes according to Sica's plan, these will be worked into next year's research budget.

Sica hopes that substantial sums of money will start to flow early next year. “We'll need at least IL100 billion [US$46 million] per year, and probably a lot more,” he says.

Given the unpredictability of Italian politics — and the infighting at the ministry over the control of any genomics programme — this timetable may be a little optimistic. But if it works it will give Italian biology, long hampered by under-funding and poor management, a shot in the arm.

“Like all areas of biomedicine, the small amounts of funding available to neuroscience research are distributed thinly across a large number of research groups, and not strategically coordinated,” says Piergiorgio Strata, professor of neurophysiology at the University of Turin, who will coordinate the neurosciences committee.

Genome research has struggled to gain a toe-hold in Italy. “Italy has been the only one of the G8 countries not to have a genome project, or any serious money for genome research from the state,” says Andrea Ballabio, director of the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine in Milan, and a member of the genomics committee, now called the Committee for Medical Genetics.

This concern led Ballabio, along with several other top geneticists and molecular biologists in Italy, to create an informal group called the Genome Task Force. This spent more than a year working in secret — to escape external pressures — on a strategy paper for genome research. It had planned to present the paper to the research ministry, when it was overtaken by Sica's initiative.

The paper suggests the creation of national centres to service fields such as genotyping, bioinformatics, expression profiling and proteomics. It also advocates the support of projects to develop animal models for genetic diseases, and to build on strengths in population genetics. This paper is likely to be a springboard for the national committee's discussions.

“The committee is an important first step for us,” says Ballabio, “and it is certainly not too late for Italy to catch up — the interesting genome work is only just starting now that the sequences are being completed.”

Although the genomics and neurosciences national committees will define broad strategic goals, they will not control the distribution of grant money. This will be based on the advice of a panel of international experts.

Sica, a neuropathologist from the University of Naples, was appointed undersecretary of state for research last December. Knowing that his time in office would be short — government collapses notwithstanding, general elections are due in Italy next year — he has concentrated on pushing through initiatives in what he believes to be the two most important research areas. Many of the scientists on the two committees feel that Sica's initiative would almost certainly have evaporated had he not been reappointed.