The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership has had a turbulent run.

The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership was intended to make European researchers work together to test promising vaccines and therapies against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. But with the appointment of the partnership's third executive director in as many years, it has yet to fulfill its ambitious premise.

I hope we now have more clearly established who is responsible for what. Peter Lange, EDCTP

Launched in 2003 by the EU, the partnership was an attempt to build infrastructure for phase 2 and 3 clinical trials in developing countries. With offices in The Hague, Netherlands, and in Cape Town, South Africa, it receives €100 million each year from the European Commission and 15 member states.

But the group's organizational chart resembles the Krebs cycle more than a pyramid, and power struggles between its three management boards and the European Commission marred it from the start. The first executive director was dismissed last September after complaints over the handling of the first set of proposals, and no calls have gone out since. “Basically, nothing has been done,” says Giuseppe Pantaleo, an HIV vaccine researcher in Lausanne.

Peter Lange, outgoing chair of the partnership's Assembly, acknowledges the problems, but says he hopes the organization has left its “turbulent past” behind. With a new director, new procedures and a second call for proposals due within weeks, Lange says the partnership will be “restarted.” In June, French researcher Odile Leroy took office as the group's new executive director, but the organizational chart remains complex. “It cannot be changed,” says Lange. But, “I hope we now have more clearly established who is responsible for what.” —PV