Sir

I find the News report about the sudden closure of the Basel Institute for Immunology (BII) by the Swiss-based drug company Roche ( Nature 405, 605; 2000) very sad. Not only is one of the world's leading immunology institutes closing, but also my home town is losing possibly its best scientific institution.

It is surprising that a giant company such as Roche is not willing to continue to support an institute that has for 30 years helped to establish and maintain the company's scientific reputation. Running the BII costs Fr40 million ($24 million) a year. This is a small amount compared with the record sales income Roche claimed for 1999: consolidated sales up 12% to Fr27.6 billion and net income up 31% to Fr5.8 billion (see http://www.roche.com).

It is frustrating that other Swiss academic institutions such as Basel University, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule or the Swiss National Foundation could not convince Roche to secure an independent existence for the BII through a joint venture.

It is only a partial relief that Roche will replace the BII with a new centre for applied genomics. This will be supervised by Roche's research director, so the institute will lose its independent status. Nobody questions the importance of medically oriented genome research, but closing one of the best immunology institutes in the world is too big a sacrifice. Basel does not have large space resources, but even so Roche could surely have found a site for an additional world-class institute there.