Munich

The Austrian Academy of Sciences and the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim have announced plans to set up a high-profile Institute of Molecular and Cellular Bioinformatics (IMBA) in Vienna.

The new institute will work closely with Boehringer Ingelheim's Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, sharing its scientific advisory board and service facilities. The two institutes will form a new Genome Research Centre aimed at combining research in molecular biology and its potential medical applications.

The IMBA will be owned and financed by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, with money from the Austrian ministry for science and transport, and the city of Vienna will pay for the construction of a new building. Annual core funding will be about 100 million schillings (US$8 million) a year.

Boehringer Ingelheim will have no direct control over the IMBA's research strategy, but will give it access to the IMP's scientific infrastructure, including sequencing facilities and electron microscopes.

All income from joint scientific research will be shared between the institutes in accordance with their input. Boehringer Ingelheim will have an option to buy the IMBA's share of an invention, or to license it.

The IMBA will house 60–80 scientists in a new building adjacent to the IMP. The first groups will start work in temporary accommodation within a year, and recruitment of scientific staff will start immediately.

Kim Nasmyth, the IMP's scientific director, will keep his position at the IMP, but will also be responsible for establishing the IMBA's scientific programmes during the recruitment phase, and for coordinating the direction of research at the two institutes.

He is keen to create innovative career structures at the IMBA, which, like the IMP, will have no tenured positions. There will therefore be “huge and continuous opportunities for young scientists”, says Nasmyth.

Research at the IMBA will focus on human molecular and cellular biology and, in particular, on the medical implications of research results from the IMP, which has been successful in basic research on model organisms aimed at understanding the origins of diseases such as cancer.

Research at the IMBA may include the development of methods for analysing normal and diseased human tissue, and identifying human polymorphisms that contribute to multigene diseases. Its bioinformaticists will work on transforming raw sequence data into knowledge for medical use.

Bernd Wetzel, head of international research and development at Boehringer Ingelheim, welcomes the decision by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to collaborate so closely with a privately funded institute. “They have recognized the mood of the times,” he says.

Werner Welzig, president of the academy, says the cooperation with Boehringer Ingelheim marks a “new departure” for biological science in Austria.