Not for the sake of absorption

MEPhI, UNN and TSU joined the alliance because they were brought closer... by medicine

Elizaveta Ponarina, "Search"

More precisely, these three national research universities, with the participation of the North-West Center for Strategic Research Foundation (CSR Foundation), have joined forces in medical research in order to bring the results of fundamental research to clinical practice as quickly as possible. Preferably personalized. For this, they created the Translational Medicine Alliance.

The idea of the alliance was born a year ago, and all year the initiators of cooperation have been working out options for relationships and selecting projects with which to start the activities of the interuniversity center. There were several projects related to nanomaterials, neurotechnologies and the prospects of creating a digital laboratory. In all three areas, all three universities have interesting developments. Moreover, there will be no dominant university in the alliance, either in the field of science or organizationally. For example, the NRU MEPhI has undoubtedly huge competencies, weight and priority in nanotechnology and nanomaterials. In this field, UNN is a co-executor in a number of complex and promising scientific projects. But in terms of neurotechnologies, UNN has a great reserve and acts as a leader, but without the competencies that Tomsk State University and MEPhI have, the implementation of the conceived project on neurotechnologies in the theranostics of oncology, tissue and organ regeneration is impossible. Individually, the resources of any Russian university today are not enough to implement projects of this level, so universities are joining forces. 

– So how far are you from helping an ordinary patient? Usually, there are decades of painstaking work between basic research and the operating room... – I ask the alliance members a few minutes before the signing of the agreement.

– It's very close to real medicine, – Maria Vedunova, director of the Institute of Biology and Biomedicine of the Lobachevsky National Research University, confidently answers. – Now the first task is to bring a number of projects to mind, finding the means to do this in order to implement them in full. Work is a step away from clinical medicine, a year or two - and entry into practice.

– So do you need the Fund "Center for Strategic Research "North-West" as a source of money? 

– He is the fourth participant, in fact, an arbitrator who does not allow any one participant to pull the blanket over himself. Therefore, the meeting will be moderated by the chairman of the Board of this fund, Vladimir Knyaginin. His role is to keep from excesses, to help find the end user of our products.

– Are you talking about medicines? Methods of treatment? That is, about pharmaceutical companies and factories that will produce your drugs and devices, or about patients?

– And about that, and about the other, and about the third – about training personnel for high-tech medicine. Today, each participant will tell about their plans.

Indeed, not only the rectors of the three research institutes gathered for the session on the creation of the Translational Medicine Alliance to sign the agreement, but also their teams. The discussion began with V. 's remark .Knyaginina said that "it is a rare case that an alliance is created not to absorb someone, but to grow new international–level competencies together." And this today requires not only huge funds, but also a lot of time. According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of the book "Geniuses and Outsiders", in any field of creativity it is necessary to spend at least 10,000 man-hours to achieve perfection. This means that you have to give 10 years of your life to a new business for yourself. None of the universities has such time to prepare a full-fledged specialist, for example, for high-tech medicine. And there you need a person who, at least, understands medicine and technology. Then 20 years to cook? No. The only way out is to combine competencies. Aspirin with 25 atoms in a molecule is replaced by molecules where from 5 to 25 thousand atoms are collected according to a different geometry. And this requires huge calculations, individualized diagnoses, personalized medications, that is, the most complex mathematics, physics, chemistry... Not to mention the fact that technology is becoming different. To go this way, we are taking the first step – we are organizing an independent alliance capable of interacting with external partners within the framework of the triumvirate.

Why the alliance? This was explained by Marina Lipetsk, director of the CSR Foundation, noting that the alliance has become the dominant model in high-tech business because it allows us to storm the complex problems and challenges that arise in medicine today. There are several players in our alliance, a common correct task, a project consortium and the ability to attract money from various sources to pay for a rather expensive state-scale project. We cannot delay. Translational medicine is a capital–intensive megaproject that allows you to bring individual world-class technological products into new businesses. The alliance's task is to pave the way for promising projects to foundations that listen to the consolidated opinion of the scientific community. All three universities are participants of the global leadership program, cooperating, it is necessary to achieve a certain critical mass that allows you to establish yourself on the global map of leaders of scientific programs. Yes, modern global technology networks include 80-100 technology partners. This is the growth reserve that needs to be laid if we are applying for long-term work, achieving world-class standards by 2025. Today we have 23 significant thematic laboratories and about 40 serious partners who automatically become partners of the alliance on this topic. Their number should be increased at least twice in order to reach a set of business processes that will provide us not only with scientific development, but also with an effective, fairly cheap and high-tech application. This is the process of translating scientific research into practice. 

– First of all, we must form a structure capable of making commitments, substantiating our claims for funds and resources and using them productively, – said V. Knyaginin. – Alliance members do not acquire any formal shoulder straps that would give the right to privileges when receiving resources, except for the "leader in research" shoulder straps. Accordingly, the most important thing in cooperation is the precise definition of the purpose of research that can be supported by the National Technology Initiative or the 5-100 Project, and there are serious competitors. We will have to hurry, be open, but keep our own thematic areas, otherwise we will have to adapt after others... There are only three universities in the alliance because it is important for the foundation to work out the machinery of the alliance in such a way that it makes sense to multiply it for other topics that are as new, extensive and difficult to bring together as yours.

Well, then the scientists told about their achievements in oncology, cardiology and neuroscience. About these three areas, we can say that today there are the most acute, the most serious challenges. In oncology, the most expensive and not always effective means of diagnosis and treatment are used. Cardiology is the number one problem for Russia. But if new diagnostic and treatment technologies are applied, the social significance can be reduced threefold, experts say. Neurological diseases are occurring more and more often because people have become... to live longer, and with aging, the body begins to "malfunction". In a word, the listed diseases are "diseases of the XXI century, so, by the way, they are designated in the WHO report. And a kind of black hole for global finance," said Marina Lipetsk. The translational medicine centers that the alliance hopes to create look like scientific ones, but, according to the organizers, they will function as scientific and engineering ones. It is important that all three universities will participate in each. 

For example, the project "Nanoteranostics". Irina Zavestovskaya, Director of the Engineering Physics Institute of Biomedicine at the MEPhI National Research University, told about him:

– Nanoteranostics is a rapidly developing new direction that uses the achievements of nanotechnology for the production of biocompatible and biodegradable nanoparticles in early diagnosis and targeted treatment. The project has three platforms in which our competencies are combined. One is related to the production of these nanoparticles and understanding what they are – their characterization. The second is with their visualization and control of nanoparticles. In the third, all these studies are combined and transformed into nanotechnology for biomedicine. The goal is to produce completely different nanoparticles in different ways, to make sure that they are biocompatible and preferably biodegradable, that is, they themselves are excreted from the body. Such nanoparticles, specially functionalized, can be used as a diagnostic and treatment tool. For example, hyperthermia: nanoparticles, being delivered to the tumor, heat up, overheat the tumor – and thus kill it. Nuclear nanomedicine is an actively developing field of research at all three universities. The alliance's research policy is aimed at making comprehensive use of all our resources, achievements, and the bases of partners who support us, such as, for example, the enterprises of the Kaluga Pharmaceutical Cluster, with which we actively interact. 

Maria Vedunova spoke about the prospects of neurotechnologies in oncology. According to her, each of the three universities conducts unique studies of brain regeneration processes and has unique competencies in the development of completely new biomaterials. The MEPhI Research Institute has developed an endoscope for neuro-oncology, which has been clinically tested and allows for fluorescent navigation during the removal of brain tumors, and the UNN has created a gliomoscope that allows you to assess the functional state of tissue at the cellular level, that is, during surgery to enable the surgeon to determine whether it is necessary to remove tissue, because there is a risk of metastasis or complications. As a result of such a large project, new methods of generating the nervous system – neurotransplants from the brain and spinal cord - should be put into practice in parallel. For the spinal cord, these are whole engineering tasks, even more complex than for the brain, and the emergence of new diagnostic and prognostic criteria that can be used in the clinic. Moreover, the project can scale into the field of regenerative medicine. Imagine that instead of prosthetics, a person will grow his own limb. A market that will fundamentally negate the existing one – and literally by 2030.

Viktor Kazantsev, Vice-Rector for Research at UNN, presented the Digital Laboratory project. The essence of the project is login, digital data processing, a complex complex of decision–making. Yuri Kistenev, Deputy Vice-Rector for Scientific Research of Tomsk State University, Professor, presented the results of research in the field of creating new medical materials based on biopolymers, ceramics, alloys. TSU's competencies make it possible to create biodegradable materials and textures as close as possible to natural human tissues. These developments are critically important for nanoteranostics and reconstructive medicine. The alliance has three supercomputers, there is a backlog of multimedia visualization systems, there are high-performance computing complexes of graphics processors necessary for different stages of digital product development. Well, and separate diagnostic devices that are from the category of wearable electronics. Its boom is growing, it is believed that by 2020 the market of "human-borne" biometrics will make telemedicine everyday...

In short, all the developments targeted by the Translational Medicine Alliance are the most recent and promising. The general mood of the participants: "We need to occupy the frontiers!". But these are universities, and therefore another topic of their cooperation is advanced training. In order to implement the plan, in order to reach advanced medical technologies, it is necessary to ensure in advance the appearance of specialists of an absolutely new level. Namely, those who have a basic medical education and at the same time are able to work very well on high-tech equipment. According to the rector of MEPhI Mikhail Strikhanov, there are no such qualified specialists in the country yet. The Rector expressed readiness to deploy new network educational programs in the space of three universities starting from 2017.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  09.01.2017