Feature: Directions of travel
1 October 2005. By Ian Jones.
According to Director Mark Walport, the Wellcome Trust's new Strategic Plan, Making a Difference, is more about evolution than revolution. Building on the Trust's first five-year Strategic Plan, developing the new one has led to some significant refinements: "I think it made us think more carefully about how we support research."
Supporting excellence
"A key feature of Wellcome Trust support is about supporting the smartest people who have the most original ideas," says Dr Walport. As a result, responsive-mode funding of investigator-led proposals will remain central to the Trust. "I think the key principle of responsive funding is one that has sustained us through the last Plan and will continue through the next Plan."
So where does an organisation's strategic thinking kick in? The Director highlights two ways in which the Trust can have a positive influence. The first is in identifying key areas of need: "It's always important to focus the research community to important research questions. I think that funders can play a role in identifying, with their research communities, what are the key questions and opportunities. But having done that it's up to the scientists to demonstrate that they can come in with first-class research proposals and compete through the peer review system."
A second important activity is developing the appropriate mechanisms to support these proposals. Recently, significant changes have been made to funding mechanisms, particularly to provide additional flexibility. "The way forward for the Trust is not to have large numbers of different schemes with rather restrictive rules for entry but to have flexible schemes that people can use in the best possible way."
Particularly important, says Dr Walport, are the Wellcome Trust's new Strategic Awards.
"Strategic Awards are an important new grant-making mechanism. Their scope is limited only by the imagination of the research community that we fund."
The Trust's flexibility will also be enhanced by the decision to hold back 10 per cent of funds each year for 'special cases' - major proposals in areas of strategic importance, which fall outside the scope of the Trust's standard funding schemes or streams.
Last year, 2004, saw the introduction of the streams model of research funding, with the associated funding and strategy committees. These, suggests Dr Walport, will be essential to the implementation of the Plan over the next five years. "They're going to play a key role in two areas. One is in helping us to evaluate the portfolio of research that we fund - looking at the outputs and outcomes of research and acting as a 'critical friend'. And secondly, helping us to look at the scientific landscape and see gaps and opportunities where our funding could have an impact."
Planning ahead
The Strategic Plan avoids identifying many specific targets. "That's deliberate," emphasises Dr Walport. "It goes back to the fact that you can't be too directive." But there are areas, he suggests, that are ripe for future development.
"I think there are a couple of directions of travel. Our international funding has made a difference, directly, to human health. We have decided we are going to increase our international funding - but only where we can support excellence."
A second area likely to be important is technology transfer - taking the promise created by fundamental science to derive practical medical benefits. Biology continues to be an area of extraordinarily rapid progress. But harnessing that new knowledge, and using it to generate new products, remains a costly and time-consuming process.
So, on the one hand, a better understanding of the processes of disease, plus an array of new resources (such as genome sequences) and research tools (such as high-throughput technologies), are allowing us to conceptualise therapies on a rational basis. Good examples are drugs targeted at molecules known to be involved in cancers, for example, or vaccines based on key pathogen proteins.
"Having said all that," he adds, "there's still a need for the detailed traditional understanding of how individual molecules and processes work. I don't think we've lost the traditional biology - and indeed we mustn't do that."
A supportive environment
A further area earmarked for special attention is public engagement. The period covered by the new Plan will see the opening of a new public venue at the Wellcome Trust's old headquarters at 183 Euston Road - an exciting and innovative new approach to bring different communities together. But it won't be the only area of public engagement boosted during 2005-2010. "There's no single approach that works," suggests the Director. "It's about taking a diverse approach."
Of huge importance will be the new network of Science Learning Centres, a partnership with the UK Department for Education and Skills that will provide exciting professional development opportunities for teachers. Through the Centres, teachers will be able to tap directly into the most up-to-date biomedical research and innovative ways to teach about new developments, their implications and potential impact on people's lives. Several regional Centres are open and the Wellcome-funded National Centre opens in November 2005.
Five years on
The new Strategic Plan includes brief summaries of some of the investments, and achievements, that were made during the lifetime of the first Plan - including substantial progress in malaria therapeutics, Clinical Research Facilities, Science Learning Centres and many others. How will we know whether the new Plan is really making a difference? Ten indicators of progress have been included, outlining at the highest level what the Wellcome Trust is striving to achieve through taking forward the aims and objectives detailed in the Plan. The indicators will be used to develop a more systematic approach to capture and assess the outputs and outcomes of the work supported.
Overall, Dr Walport takes a pragmatic view of the Strategic Plan and how it will shape the work of the Wellcome Trust over the next five years. It is, he suggests, about creating a framework, a set of high-level principles that can guide - but not constrain - research communities that look to the Trust for funding. Although the Wellcome Trust has a very wide remit, its desire to 'make a difference' calls for some degree of focus. "But in no case are we going to tell scientists what to do. We're indicating directions where, if we get good questions, we would like to spend our money."
Making a difference: Strategic Plan 2005-2010
The Wellcome Trust's mission is to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health. During 2005-2010, our aims are:
1. Advancing knowledge: To support research to increase understanding of health and disease, and its societal context
2. Using knowledge: To support the development and use of knowledge to create health benefit
3. Engaging society: To engage with society to foster an informed climate within which biomedical research can flourish
4. Developing people: To foster a research community and individual researchers who can contribute to the advancement and use of knowledge
5. Facilitating research: To promote the best conditions for research and the use of knowledge
6. Developing our organisation: To use our resources efficiently and effectively.
Order it/browse online
You can download the PDF, browse online content or order from the Strategic Plan 2005-2010 pages.
Photo credit for 'Scanning electron micrograph of Penicillium mould, producing spores.', D Gregory and D Marshall