Iain Mattaj is the director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory ( EMBL ) and the European Bioinformatics Institute ( EBI ).
To read a shortened version of this interview, please click here.
What is biomedical science?
An attempt to combine what we know from studying basic biological processes with medicine. In order to be able to treat diseases, we need to understand what causes disease. And what causes disease is normally something that has gone wrong in the biological function of a system. We know how biological systems function and can predict what was wrong and are sometimes able to find ways to repair them to cure the disease.
You predict huge growth in this sector in the future. Why?
This is very predictable. This is because basic biological research is exploding in its capacity to generate data and information on many areas, like how human beings differ genetically. This will eventually lead to knowledge on how the genetic differences give rise to actual behaviour and disease development. There are many examples in many areas.
Why do you say biomedical scientists need to turn towards the ICT sector?
The reason is simply that the amount of data that we have and the complexity of biological systems is such that we will not be able to understand them fully by experimental methods. We have to be able to generate computational models of how biological systems work and test experimentally whether the models are correct. So, via combination of computational modelling and experimental testing, eventually, we can come to have a model that actually represents how a living system works.
Living systems can be a part of a cell, a whole cell, a whole organ or a whole organism. And we have to make models on all of these levels to see how biological systems work. The major growth areas in biomedical science are therefore modelling and simulation.
We also need to be able to handle and distribute the amount of data we produce so that everyone can use it better. So we need much better data resource infrastructures in Europe.
In biology, we need to be able to collect all data – gene sequencing data is very different form that of a protein structure, for example - and also be able to put these very different types of data together. Therefore, we need data integration methods, data collection, annotation and distribution methods.
What are the current and future applications of combinations of biomedical science and ICT?
Identification of genes which cause cancer was actually a combination of studies which were done experimentally in biology, and computational analysis of the genes that cause cancer. The identification of potential drug targets for use in cancer was done by a combination of experimental biology and computational biology.
There is a reasonably good model for predicting heart rate, which can be used to test the effect of drugs on heart rate as well.
Basically, in the last 20 years, all life science research has been accompanied by informatics research and that is increasing all the time.
Who's the world leader in this research field?
Both the EU and the US are strong in this field, but the US has the advantage that the basic biology community and the clinical and medical communities are less separate there. So they work more closely together and share more information and cross disciplinary boundaries more easily, because medical schools in the US are designed in a way that all students are taught by very basic biologists. In Europe, they tend to be separate disciplines in teaching, and this persists throughout the life of clinicians and basic biologists. It is difficult to bridge this gap in Europe.
ICT is not such a big problem. By its nature, ICT is a field that looks for new challenges to be explored. So I don't see the same defensiveness in the ICT community as I see in the clinical community.
What are the main research and policy challenges facing this field?
The major research challenge is to really understand living systems in a way that enables us to predict what is going to happen to them. If we get to the stage that we can predict what's going to happen to a human being if a certain drug is given or a food is eaten, this will enable us to design better healthcare and drugs.
At policy level, there are various steps on the way. It is essential to support emerging areas of systems biology or synthetic biology, which try to understand organisms in a holistic way. It is essential to support data resources and databases. It is critical that the information that we generate experimentally does not get lost but is collected and distributed, so that everybody can use everyone else's data.
This also means that data standards have to be fixed. We also need to find a way to make clinical and medical information accessible to a large community of researchers to work on it using the tools of informatics. This has been incredibly useful in understanding basic biology. Also, if we can solve problems of security and anonymity, it will be extremely useful for solving the problems.
Currently, each EU member state has its own laws on patient information data. In most countries, access to patient data and genetic and disease history is only allowed for the doctor who is directly treating the patient.
How do you see the role of media in communicating the paradigm shift from treatment to prevention in health care and personalised health?
We need a dialogue via the media between the public and clinical and scientific professions about what the concerns and potential benefits are. And if we can understand what the public concerns are, we can try to take care of the concerns and still obtain the benefits of making this type of research and of making patient data available in a broader way.
It think this will never happen unless patients support it. Patient data will never become available if the general public is against it happening. I think we need to work hard to try to inform people via the media why this would be very useful.
