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ifen prevented breast cancer in high-riskwomen, only 2 per cent of the participantswere African American.

But the authors commended the NCI forhaving acted on several recommendations.And NCI officials, testifying before the sen-ate subcommittee last Thursday (21 Janu-ary), said they agreed with some of its sug-gestions. These included the need to classifygroups for epidemiological purposes by eth-nicity and not race, allowing for the role offactors like culture and behaviour in cancerincidence and mortality.

But Klausner disputed the finding thatthe institute spent just $24 million onresearch among minorities in 1997 out of abudget of $2.39 billion. He put the figure at$124 million. The discrepancy arises becausethe study included only research specificallydesigned to address cancer in minorities.The NCI also includes general studiesinvolving minority participants where ques-tions are asked that are relevant to them.

More generally, Klausner rejected thenotion of segregating minority research. Forthe NCI to pursue minority research onlythrough projects pertaining specifically tominorities would be impractical, inefficientand counterproductive, he said.

“We want to be sure that minorities andthe underserved are fairly treated,” said sub-committee chair Arlen Specter (Republican,Pennsylvania). “It may be that [money] couldbe directed more specifically to those groups.”Specter said he might include in this year’sNIH spending bill “specific standards as towhat needs to be done”. Meredith Wadman

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women. Poor whites, it adds, face similarproblems; for instance, rates of lung cancerare higher in Appalachia than elsewhere.

“No blueprint or strategic plan to direct orcoordinate this research activity appears toexist” at NCI, the committee writes, and fund-ing for minority research is “inadequate”. Itsays the NCI’s system for monitoring cancerincidence, mortality and survival in differentpopulations misses key minority groups.

The NIH and NCI should be more activein shaping minority cancer research, thereport argues, as institutes leave “criticalgaps” unfilled. They tolerate a research pri-ority-setting process that “fails to serve theneeds” of ethnic minority and poor groups.

Recruitment of research subjects is aproblem, too, it says. For example, in onelarge study that showed that the drug tamox-

[WASHINGTON] The US National Cancer Insti-tute (NCI) is falling short on work with eth-nic minorities and the poor, according to areport from the Institute of Medicine (IOM).The report claims that the NCI devoted only1 per cent of its $2.4 billion budget on strate-gic planning, data collection and spendingon research in this area in 1997 — althoughthe NCI disputes this figure.

The higher incidence and death rate ofsome cancers among ethnic minorities andthe poor require more action by the NCI andthe National Institutes of Health (NIH),according to the report, released last week. Itwas requested in 1997 by the Senate appro-priations subcommittee that funds the NIH.

“It is critical that we learn why some ethnicminorities and the medically underservedare more prone to cancer and less likely tosurvive it,” says Alfred Haynes, chair of thecommittee that wrote the report, and formerpresident and dean of the Drew PostgraduateMedical School in Los Angeles.

But some of its conclusions were chal-lenged by NCI officials. Director RichardKlausner said that, far from lacking a strate-gic plan for minority research, the NCI has “avery active, dynamic and visionary planningprocess” that includes minority concerns.

The report notes that the rate of prostatecancer is 15 per cent higher in African Amer-ican white men. African American womenwho develop breast cancer are more likely todie from it than white women. Asian Ameri-cans get stomach and liver cancer at higherrates than whites, and cervical cancer is high-est in Hispanic and Vietnamese American

Cancer body ‘must do more for minorities’

German/Swedish venture creates plant biotechnology giant[MUNICH] The German pharmaceutical andchemical company BASF last weekannounced a major research collaborationwith the Swedish seed-breeding companySvalöf Weibull (SW). BASF and SW willmerge their research activities in an attemptto become one of the world’s leading plantbiotechnology companies.

A mutual company, BASF Plant Sciences,will be set up in Ludwigshafen, near theBASF headquarters. Its research budget willbe DM100 million (US$59 million) a year,jointly financed by BASF and SW.

BASF Plant Sciences will set researchgoals in plant biotechnology and coordinateinternal research by the two companies,distribute research tasks among existingjoint ventures, and commission externalresearch, for example at universities.

BASF believes plant biotechnology is oneof the most promising areas of commerce,and will pour DM500 million into researchover the next three years, 20 per cent of the

company’s life-science research budget.Two joint ventures were founded last

summer: the Berlin-based Metanomics, andSunGene at Gatersleben in the German stateof Sachsen-Anhalt. They will each eventuallyemploy 50 scientists and technicians.

Metanomics is linked to the Max PlanckInstitute for Molecular Plant Physiology inPotsdam, of which one of Metanomics’partners, Lothar Willmitzer, is a director. Itsresearch will focus on understanding whichplant genes are responsible for biologicalfunctions such as growth and response toenvironmental stress.

SunGene, founded jointly by BASF andthe Institute for Plant Genetics andCultivated Plants Research in Gatersleben, isto develop techniques for adding genes to acultivated plant’s genome.

BASF Plant Sciences is intended to act asa ‘technology platform’ for the twocompanies, as well as for SW’s existingresearch and development facilities in plant

biotechnology. SW will bring the interests ofits four research units into the firm: DNALandMarks, based in Quebec, the Swedishcompanies Amylogene and Lipogene, andthe Swedish-based Nilsson-Ehle Laboratory.

Plant geneticists at the University ofFreiburg are already profiting from a DM30million collaboration with BASF, which paysfor the salaries and equipment of 40scientists and technicians. The group isheaded by Ralf Reski, a botanist who foundthat single genes of the moss Physcomitrellapatens can be knocked out by homologuerecombination.

Reski hopes the moss will become amodel organism for basic research, similarto the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana,but with a far lower recombinationefficiency. Last spring Reski convinced BASFof his work’s potential, the commercialaspects of which are to be investigatedfurther by companies such as Metanomicsand SunGene. Quirin Schiermeier

Black death: a man at last September’s cancermarch in Washington pleads for more research.

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