BIRAX Regenerative Medicine Initiative: an interview with Alex Brookes

13 May 2016

Written by RegMedNet

In this interview, Alex Brookes, Head of BIRAX and Higher Education at the British Council (UK), discusses the importance of the BIRAX programme, a £10 million initiative of the British Council and British Embassy in Israel in collaboration with the Pears Foundation and the UJIA, in accelerating the development of regenerative medicine therapies.

BIRAX (the Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership) is a £10 million initiative of the British Council and British Embassy in Israel in collaboration with the Pears Foundation and the UJIA. The programme aims to bring together world-leading scientists from Israel and the UK and fund cutting-edge research using stem cell and regenerative medicine therapies in order to develop treatments and cures for conditions and diseases such as cardiovascular and liver disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s.

Many medical research charities have joined the programme, such as Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Alzheimer’s Society, Arthritis Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, JDRF, MND Scoland, MS Society and Parkinson’s UK, and over £7 million has been committed to 15 world-class projects including eight joint medical research projects announced in February 2015, including research to use heart cells to repair damaged heart muscle.

In this interview, Alex Brookes, Head of Programme (BIRAX) at the British Council (UK), discusses the importance of the BIRAX programme in accelerating the development of regenerative medicine therapies.

Alex Brookes
Head of BIRAX and Higher Education at the British Council, Israel.

Can you please tell us a little about yourself and your career to date?

I have been at the British Council since 2011 and head up the BIRAX and Higher Education team. We work as part of a larger team with the Science and Innovation team of the British Embassy in Israel and together deliver a wide range of activities and initiatives designed celebrate, encourage and facilitate cooperation between the UK and Israel in science and higher education.

I studied both my BA and MA at the University of Manchester. Prior to joining the British Council in 2011 prior to which she worked for a number of UN agencies in the UK, Russia and Israel and spent a brief time as a civil servant connected to (what-was) the Department of Children, School and Families

Can you briefly explain how the BIRAX programme came about?

The British Council was founded to create a friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and the wider world. The programme in each country is dependent on the local context. Science is at the heart of the UK-Israel relationship and BIRAX was created to bring together leading British and Israeli scientists and combine the best of what the two countries can offer.

You have support from a fantastic Steering Committee: Chris Mason (Professor of Regenerative Medicine Bioprocessing, University College London), Smadar Cohen (Director, Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell (RMSC) Research Center, Ben-Gurion University), F Susan Wong (Professor of Experimental Diabetes & Metabolism, Cardiff University) and Benjamin Glaser (Head, Department of Endocrinology, Hadassah — Hebrew University Medical Centre). What role do they play?

The members of the Steering Committee played a huge role. It was with them that we developed the programme, selected the session themes and invited speakers. For the first time for us we also left some slots open for people to presented papers so the Steering Committee also assessed these abstracts. As well as opening the event and chairing many sessions, the Steering Committee members also judged the poster presentations.

In addition to the Steering Committee we had an Advisory Group for the Student and Young Researchers Symposium made up of Chris Denning (University of Nottingham), Paul Fairchild (University of Oxford), Ally Rooney (University of Edinburgh) and Gahl Levy (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). This group among other things helped assess the student and young researchers’ paper presentations.

You have actively made sure that young researchers could attend the BIRAX Conference at the University of Oxford, UK. What do you hope students and early-career researchers will get out of the event?

It is incredibly important to us that early career researchers have opportunities through the BIRAX programme and with thanks to the generous partners of the programme were able to offer travel grants for participants to attend the conference. Notably Tel Aviv University Trust, Weizmann UK, the British friends of Hebrew University, Technion UK and Ben-Gurion Foundation. We also offer a travel grant (fellowship) programme that enables individuals to travel from the UK to Israel and vice versa for up to six months.

We hope the students and early career researchers would have the opportunity to be exposed to some of the cutting edge research taking place in labs in the UK and Israel and would also the chance to network. For the first time we introduced a student and young researchers symposium and selected 12 presentations that spoke at plenary.

This is the third BIRAX conference — what do you think has lead to the event being so successful?

This is the first time the event has been held in the UK and we think the high registration reflects the genuine and growing interest in the topics. We know we are building a small community of individuals from both countries working in the fields. The conference comes just before the deadline for funding under the 3^rd BIRAX Call for proposals, so we know that some people arrived actively looking for a partner.

Have the topics covered in the conference changed much over the last three years?

The first Conference was held in 2011 and we can see some change over the five years. Most notably we have seen an increase in the number of presentations relating to translational research. This year we were also able to introduce a session on the regulatory route to the clinic delivered by the UK Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult.

Communication and collaboration are really important in helping the field progress faster. What does the BIRAX programme do aside from the conference to encourage collaboration?

The most significant component of the BIRAX programme are the research grants supported under the scheme. To date we have supported 15 three-year projects with funding of up to £400,000 between groups in the UK and Israel. Over £7 million has been committed to projects that include research to use heart cells to restore damaged heart muscle and the use of breath tests for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease.

We also run a fellowship scheme to allow early career researchers working in the field of regenerative medicine in Britain and Israel to take up research visits of up to 6 months focused on developing research links and scientific collaboration.

In addition, BIRAX hosts a calendar of symposia, workshops, and stakeholder events in both the UK and Israel.

We work closely with our partners (BHF, MS etc) and recently hosted a number of online webinars introducing different areas and some of the research taking place to tackling the conditions and diseases that affect millions around the world. These are available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKRyBqAF3AU and www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKJHtvmh2aQ.

What do you consider the greatest achievement the programme has made to date?

We are really proud of many of the achievements of the programme. We are starting to see the first joint publications as a direct result of BIRAX funding (In Best of 2015 Cell series yesterday http://info.cell.com/best-of-cell-2015 , the BIRAX funded research on making human Germ Cells from skin and iPSCs published was TOP on the list., the experiences of the BIRAX fellows has been really positive and we’re delighted and so grateful for all of the partners that have joined us.

What do you hope to have achieved in 5—10 years time?

I hope that we’ll be seeing more results from the projects that theBIRAX programme has supported, more investment into collaborative activity, a new field supported under the scheme and involvement of countries beyond the UK and Israel.

Acknowledgements/Disclosure

In 2015, Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Arthritis Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, JDRF, MS Society, Parkinson’s UK joined the BIRAX Regenerative Medicine Initiative. We are grateful to all founder partners for their continued support: Celia and Edward Atkin CBE; the Sheila and Denis Cohen Charitable Trust; the Barbara and Stanley Fink Foundation; Oxford University – Glycobiology Institute; the I sraeli Ministry of Science, Technology and Space, the Kahn Foundation, Maurice and Vivienne Wohl Philanthropic Foundation; the Medical Research Council; Pears Foundation; the Parasol Foundation Trust; Rosetrees Trust; Wolfson Family Charitable Trust; UJIA and Yad Hanadiv.