Abstract
In Europe, hepatodigestive diseases are among those with the highest prevalence and represent a huge socio-economic burden. UEG aims at encouraging innovation and excellence in research by supporting research facilitation and cooperation in the field of digestive health. For Luigi Ricciardiello, Chair of the UEG Research Committee and Associate Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Bologna, it is critical that the European Commission directs more funds to digestive health research in order to provide more effective preventive and treatment strategies for hepatodigestive diseases. For this reason, it is imperative that UEG will be actively involved in advocacy activities by (a) having more digestive health experts among the decision makers and expert pools of the EU institutions and (b) further collaborating with relevant entities such as the Biomed Alliance and Horizon Europe’s Mission boards.
UEG will boost more research on digestive health across Europe via the support for pan-European consortia and the establishment of a networking and information platform that will facilitate research collaboration across Europe and foster participation to European programmes.
Luigi Ricciardiello states his vision of the Committee’s activities: Our work plan is based on balanced top-down and bottom-up approaches. It means, on the one hand, fostering research facilitation and cooperation in the field of Digestive Health, and, on the other hand, encouraging excellent research (via awarding and recognising our best researchers) and advocacy for GI Research funding at the EU level.
Researchers’ Network
Launched one year ago, the Committee is developing a platform to reach its goals of supporting networking between GI researchers and make them aware of European and transnational funding opportunities, with the goal of increasing their participation in research projects. It will also upscale their knowledge and skills on EU grant proposal writing and overall EU research programmes to increase their chances of being funded in the very competitive EU programmes. It will further help to map EU-funded investigators within digestive health.
To foster the collaboration of GI researchers, the newly relaunched platform from the European Commission gathering all calls for funding and tenders is promoted. It is a very complete platform, providing many services. The UEG website will continue to host the database of interested researchers under ‘Researchers’ Network’, and an upscale of the communication towards this audience is planned, with up-to-date information on available European calls, interactive posts on social media, explanatory material to make the best use of the European platform and interaction with EU grants recipients.
Advocacy for digestive health research in Brussels
In order to ensure appropriate research funding for digestive health, European legislative and programmatic matters related to research are continuously followed. Horizon Europe, the new research and innovation programme, is being negotiated and the Research Committee is pushing to make the voice of gastroenterologists and hepatologists heard by European institutions. In this matter, the Committee also supports the effort of the Public Affairs Committee to re-establish the digestive health groups with members of the newly elected parliament.
Among the researchers who applied to the Horizon Europe mission boards and will be in the 15 driving seats of the ambitious Mission on Cancer, Marcis Leja, from the Institute of Clinical and Preventive Medicine, University of Latvia, Riga, and Regina Beets-Tan, from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, were both active past or present UEG Committee members. Ernst Kuipers was also selected to participate in the cancer mission assembly.
The Committee also follows the Horizon 2020 calls and has communicated to the community on the last calls, especially from the Societal Challenge on Health, Demographic Change and Well-Being. A Hashtag #UEGResearch has been launched, and information is shared by UEG on social media.
UEG is also an active member of the Biomed Alliance, a Brussels-based organisation advocating for the main European professional medical associations, and Berthold Koletzko, UEG Treasurer, takes part in the Biomed Alliance’s board of directors.
Data update
The Research Committee initiated a survey of the current and future research interests of each individual UEG ordinary member society (specialist societies) and published the article ‘Future research demands of the United European Gastroenterology (UEG) and its member societies’ in UEG Journal (volume 7, issue 6). The generated topic list allows collaboration between individual specialist societies, as well as advocating for future research calls at the EU level and beyond when approaching stakeholders.
A call for proposal has also been launched to conduct an analysis of the socio-economic burden of digestive diseases and identification of relevant research gaps in the field of digestive health. This study will be key to advocate further and with up-to-date data towards European institutional and political stakeholders.
UEG prizes, awards and courses promoting research
The UEG Research Committee supports excellent researchers in applying to the European Research & Innovation Programme Horizon 2020 through a €10,000 grant for proposal writing and in awarding the UEG Research Prize. This year, one of the UEG-supported project proposals, DISCOvERIE (Development, dIagnostic and prevention of gender-related Somatic and mental COmorbitiEs in iRritable bowel syndrome In Europe), coordinated by Javier Santos, was successful and will receive a European grant of €6 million.
We also further support early independent researchers with a Research Fellowship, travel grants, abstract-based awards, classroom courses (Basic Science Course, Young Investigators Meeting) and online resources.