WP1 Networking

WP1 Networking	Gerrit van Meer (P1) and Fritz Speuer (P12)

T1.1	Organize a kick-off meeting	0-2
T1.2	Identifying and joining actors (life sciences research, industry, health care	0-8
T1.3a	Symposia for ELSO meetings	9 and 21
T1.3b	Symposia for Euro Fed Lipid meeting and IBL meeting	9 and 21
T1.4	Write a position paper on the Life Sciences landscape	12-14
T1.5	Organize a general meeting	12-22
T1.6	Set-up and maintain an interactive website	0-24

T1.1 Kick-off meeting

The first activity of the SSA will be the Kick-off meeting (approximately 30 participants). This meeting will be organized by the coordinator and his staff in the Netherlands. The venue will be selected on the basis of

        (i)    easy accessibility from the different locations in Europe
        (ii)    opportunities for plenary meetings and subgroup meetings
        (iii)    value for money.
Participants will be the applicants with their major collaborators and representatives of the industry and SMEs and the health care profession. In addition, we will invite a policy maker from the field of genomics and one from the field of proteomics. Finally, we will invite an EC representative from the FP6 staff.

The aims of the kick-off meeting are:
    (i) to initiate discussions on the following core issues:
        - How to define Metabolomics?
        - What are the most promising technical approaches to propel the field forward?
        - What are the needs for standardization in the analysis of lipid molecules?
        - How can Lipidomics serve as an example for this area?
        - What impact of these approaches is expected on fundamental insights in Lipidomics?
        - What impact of these approaches is expected on medical applications of Lipidomics?
        - What impact of these approaches is expected on commercial applications of Lipidomics?
        - How to set up European collaborations in the field of Lipidomics?

    (ii) to evaluate venue scheme with locations and estimated dates for the following activities

    (iii) to further define the topics of the planned activities

    (iv) to coordinately define the contributions of all members to these activities in more detail

The meeting will consist of plenary presentations and plenary and subgroup discussions. Before the meeting a questionnaire will be sent out to the members, to make an inventory of the issues to be discussed and an inventory of suggestions as starting points for the discussion. After the meeting, the coordinator will draft a position paper to present the outcome of the discussions to the relevant stakeholders based on a proposal by Partners 9 and 12 (Lagarde et al., 2003). The intention is to publish this paper as an editorial in FEBS Letters, one of the two journals of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies.

Lagarde, M., A. Geloen, M. Record, D. Vance, and F. Spener. 2003. Lipidomics is emerging. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1634:61.

T1.2 Identifying and joining actors

As a first action national representatives will be identified via whom the persons with an interest in metabolomics and more specifically lipidomics can be approached. Special emphasis will be given to identify interested SMEs in the lipidomics/ metabomics field in all Member States. Via these persons, the contact information will be obtained of the relevant national societies. These societies will then be asked to send out a message that persons in life sciences research, industry, and health care with an interest in metabolomics/lipidomics are invited to fill out a questionnaire on the ELIfe website. This concerns their basic data like contact information, type of organization, type of work etc. These questionnaires will be analysed and will serve for preparing the meetings with representatives from the life sciences, health care and industry.

T1.3 Organize networking meetings with representatives of the life sciences (Symposia for the ELSO, Euro Fed Lipid and ICBL meetings)

One symposium with three prominent speakers will be dedicated to Lipidomics. In discussion with the organizing committees (which include partners of the consortium), the ELIfe council will propose one speaker with a background in basic research, a clinician and a representative of industry who can convey the excitement to the specific audience. (1)Young scientists will be activated through a Lipidomics symposium at the annual meeting of ELSO (European Life Scientist Organization; Partner 3) in September 2005/6. 2,000 scientists are expected at this meeting, most of whom are young scientists. Via the contacts of the ELSO president (Partner 3) with the organizing committee we expect to situate the session at a favorable time during the meeting. (2) A similar symposium at the 26th meeting of the International Society for Fat Research in Prague, September 2005, co-organized by the European Federation for the Science and Technology of Lipids (Euro Fed Lipid; Partner 12), will be directed especially at potential industrial stakeholders, and (3) at the ICBL (International Conference on the Bioscience of Lipids) in September 2006 (Pécs, Hungary) Partners 2 and 12 will organize a Lipidomics session for the European lipid biochemists.

The speakers will be asked to discuss specifically:

• the connections between the fields of metabolomics and lipidomics and the fields of genomics and proteomics
• the fields of metabolomics and lipidomics and their medical relevance
• future actions by stakeholders to continue the momentum of the present initiative after its ending
• the meeting will result in the writing of a position paper on the relation between the different fields in life sciences research.

T1.4 Write a position paper on the Life Sciences landscape

The meeting organizers will draft a position paper halfway through the contract period based on the discussions in the Annual Meeting. This will be a policy paper describing:

• how metabolomics and lipidomics are embedded in the life sciences
• how the field can optimally benefit from the expected developments in the surrounding fields
• how developments in the lipidomics field, in turn, affect those surrounding fields

The paper will be submitted to one of the European journals.

T1.5 General meeting

Under the working title: "Role of Lipidomics in the Life Sciences", a general meeting will be organized by Gerrit van Meer (P1), Kai Simons (P3) and Raymond Dwek (P5), and Fritz Spener (P12). The Advisory Board will be invited for this meeting. Lipidomics is a highly complex field with specific technological know-how present in numerous research groups in Europe. In addition, a number of established groups in other fields like cell biology, proteomics and the medical field have discovered lipids as highly interesting and important molecules in cells and organisms. This is also true for companies which also focus on the nutritional or cosmetic aspects of lipids. The purpose of the general meeting is to mobilize the European resources for solving the problems in this new field and for exploring the ramifications from lipidomics into other parts of the life sciences. Attendance will be open to all European stakeholders, but the number of attendants will be limited to 150. Besides a quotum of 50 for the consortium, the associated companies, the Advisory Board and EC representatives, participants will be selected from the applicants based on criteria of scientific excellence, medical interests, and motivation. The meeting will consist of :

        (i) scientific sessions in basic research in metabolomics and lipidomics
        (ii) scientific sessions in clinical research in metabolomics and lipidomics
        (iii) policy sessions on the role of Lipidomics in shaping the Life Sciences
        (iv) poster sessions situated in the context of an industrial fair.
        (v) one session addressing the relations between industry and basic metabolomics research
Issues that are of specific interest to industry will be dealt with in activity T3.3, the industry meeting on applications for Metabolomics and Lipidomics, which will be held as a 1.5 day satellite to the general meeting.

The meeting will be anounced via the websites of the ICBL (http://www.icbl.unibe.ch/), Euro Fed Lipid (http://www.eurofedlipid.org/), via FEBS and via ELSO (European Life Sciences Organization) and via the EU fundamental genomics electronic newsletter. The practical organization of the meeting will be carried out by the coordinator and his staff at a conference center in the Netherlands. To increase the number of outside speakers and to create possibilities for young scientists to attend this meeting co-sponsoring will be sought from FEBS.

T1.6 Set-up and maintain an interactive website

The team of the coordinator (P1) will create a website to make collected information available to the stakeholders. In order to handle sensitive information, the site will have specific areas that are accessible to a subgroup of users. However, in general, the website will provide a forum for scientific discussion and dissemination. It will also be a management tool employed in exchanging ideas for the organisation of events and in preparation of reports.

Work Package number 1

Starting date or starting event: 0

Activity Type 11

Activities specific for the support action

Participant id	P1	P12	P5	P3	P2	others
Person-months per participant	10(8)	5(3)	4(1)	3(1)	2(1)	1(0)

*person months are a total expected for the tasks, for the person months in brackets EU-funding is requested

¹¹ For Specific Support Actions each work package must relate to one (and only one) of the following two possible Activity Types:  Activities specific for the Support Action , Management activities.

Objectives The Work Package Networking covers the tasks required for creating a solid basis for long-term interactions between the basic scientists, clinical scientists and SMEs in the field of Metabolomics and of Lipidomics in particular. The objectives are to identify the important players in the field, to bring them together, use their combined ideas to position Metabolomics in the Life Sciences in a widely publicized paper, which is then used to attract a broad range of interested European scientists to a general meeting. Last objective is to create long lasting interactions via an interactive website.

Description of work The work consists of the planning and organization of various types of meetings to bring into contact persons with different backgrounds in varying combinations and in various settings. The outcome of these confrontations will be publicized by consortium members in the form of a policy publication (T1.4) and on the website (T1.6).

Deliverables D1.1    Kick-off Meeting (m2) D1.2    Address list of relevant stakeholders compiled (m8) D1.3.1    Symposium at ELSO  2005 and ELSO 2006 D1.3.2 Symposia at the Euro Fed Lipid meeting 2005 and the ICBL meeting 2006     D1.4    Paper submitted for publication in scientific journal (m14) D1.5    General Meeting  "Role of Lipidomics in the Life Sciences" (m22) D1.6    Website accessible (m2-24)

Milestones and expected result M1.1     The outcome of the Kick-Off meeting will be critically evaluated to redirect other elements of the SSA wherever this better serves its purpose (m2-3). M1.2     The compiled address list will be critically evaluated to check whether the full range of stakeholders has been reached, and subsequent actions will be determined (m8-9). M1.3     The response to the symposia will be critically evaluated to redirect other elements of the SSA wherever this better serves its purpose (m6 and m18). M1.4     Final evaluation of the present SSA. Conclusions for future initiatives (m20-24).