ONCO Life Sciences, the Pune-based pharmaceutical consulting and marketing company, has signed a general cooperation agreement with the European consulting company, Europe for Business (E4B), to support research collaborations for the European health innovation projects with the Indian scientific community and small, medium and large pharma companies. E4B is a European Consulting company specializing in identification of relevant European Union grant opportunities for European organisations.

Through the cooperation, the consulting companies will tie-in the European companies with potential Indian partners for innovation projects in pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. The collaborative research programmes will enable the Indian companies to tap the health related fund allocated by the European Commission under the 7th European Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and Demonstration (RTD FP7) for improvement of human potential in RTD, according to Ashish Agarwal, founder director, ONCO Life Sciences.

The company will arrange training programmes for Indian scientists and research based companies on the RTD opportunities in FP7 and will work as a matchmaker for the companies on need basis. "We will provide single window access to Indian scientific community , research companies , small and mid sized pharma and bio pharma companies to similar companies and bodies in Europe and get grant based projects to India, thus helping enriching the scientific pool of India," said Ashish about the new venture.

As the initial step, ONCO and E4B will jointly conduct a seminar in June 2008 for scientists with Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) separately. The seminar will introduce the entire process of proposal preparation for the fund based projects, the work involved in the process, project management and the implementation of the different aspects of the project. The main objective of the initiative is the improvement of the Human Potential in RTD in India and improves Indian participation in FP7, according to E4B sources.

Further, seminars and training programmes will be conducted for research groups at universities or research institutes, small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), early-stage researchers (postgraduate students), experienced researchers, institutions running research infrastructures of trans-national interest, international organizations, national contact points and information points, said Ashish.

The cooperation to increase the international participation in research projects is an integral part of the health theme under FP7 and project consortia in all areas are encouraged to include organisations from countries that are not EU Member States and Candidate or Associated Countries. The approval process of FP7 is now entering into action with a proposed budget of more than 50 billion euro allocated for duration of seven years from 2007.

The international cooperation will help the EU countries to achieve the main objective of health theme under FP7 including improving the health of European citizens and increasing the competitiveness and boosting the innovative capacity of European health-related industries and businesses, while addressing global health issues including emerging epidemics.

Emphasis of the theme will be on translational research, development and validation of new therapies, methods for health promotion and prevention including promotion of child health, healthy ageing, diagnostic tools and medical technologies, as well as sustainable and efficient health care systems. The theme will contribute to the research projects like the international efforts addressing global health problems, such as antimicrobial resistance, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and emerging pandemics and will support the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) programme which focuses on advanced clinical testing for the development of new vaccines, microbicides and drugs against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa etc.