Thanks to funds from the National Recovery Plan, 12 clinical research support centres have been established in Poland.
‘We want the investment made by the Medical Research Agency to pay off within five to seven years, so that clinical research centres can sustain themselves and encourage pharmaceutical companies and Polish biotechnology companies to conduct clinical trials with them', said Dr Karolina Nowak, Director of the Innovation Department at the Medical Research Agency.
However, it is worth being more active at the basic research stage. Professor Krzysztof Pyrć, president of the Foundation for Polish Science, emphasised that it is on this basis that real innovations in the biomedical field are created. And this is where industry has an important role to play. He encouraged the use of the Foundation's offer, which offers from several to tens of millions of zlotys for research, making it possible to develop interdisciplinary scientific research carried out by a network of research teams working together.
Professor Leszek Domański, Rector of the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, emphasised that science is more effective when nationwide scientific programmes are in place and laboratories are networked and communicate with each other. This would avoid duplication of the same projects, which also compete for the same funding.
The health sector faces financial problems. Professor Magdalena Krajewska, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Wrocław University of Technology, said that the shortage of funds forces the identification of priority areas in which to invest first. These specialisations include haematology, oncology and cardiology, but not nephrology.
