EpimiRNA is supported by two advisory boards – the Ethical Advisory Board and the Scientific Advisory Board. These boards shall not only ensure the highest standard of research and monitor the progress of the project by taking part in the annual meetings, but will also ensure the compliance with all necessary ethical regulations. Whenever appropriate, they will consult the consortium and make recommendations on how to best improve project performance.
Ethical Advisory Board (EAB)
The current team of EpimiRNA's Ethical Advisory Board is:
Mr David Smith
Associate Professor of Health Care Ethics
Department of General Practice
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Mr Mike Glynn
Immediate Past President of The International Bureau for Epilepsy and
CEO of Epilepsy Ireland
249 Crumlin Road
Dublin, Ireland
Prof Ronan Conroy
Associate Professor of Biostatistics,
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
PD Dr. med. Tanja Krones
Clinical Ethicist/Executive of the Clinical Ethics Committee of the University Hospital Zurich
Universitätsspital Zürich/Universität Zürich, DERM C 18
Gloriastrasse 31
CH-8091 Zürich, Switzerland
The Ethical Advisory Board will appoint two further members. The Board will organize ethics review meetings on a regular basis at annual meetings to clarify any ethics issues that may have arisen in any of the EpiMiRNA-projects. These ethics review meetings will be based on “A comprehensive strategy on how to minimize research misconduct and the potential misuse of research in EU funded research” published by the EU. As we will perform targeted next-generation sequencing the most likely potential issue could be information that may result in stigmatization or discrimination of individuals or groups of individuals. Special care will be taken to avoid such effects of new discoveries.
The Ethical Advisory Board will collect current ethical permissions, informed consent forms and other relevant documents; tasks for which permissions are not yet available will not be allowed to start until approval is made available (for such tasks, partners will apply for permissions in advance of contract completion to ensure timely deliverables). The coordinator and the project management have already collected all such documents that are currently available (see Annex IV). The EAB will be able to access these online immediately after its constitution.
Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)
The EpimiRNA SAB consists of 6 experts representing the key aspects of project activities, as indicated by the Workpackages. As such, the Advisory Board Members represent leaders in the key areas of the project:
Simon Shorvon, M.D., FRCP
Professor of Clinical Neurology, University College London, UK
Expertise: Prof Shorvon is a world-renouned neurologist whose research in epilepsy has been largely in the fields of epidemiology, clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, magnetic resonance imaging, status epilepticus and genetics. Prof Shorvon is a member of the Executive Committee of the ILAE, Joint editor-in-Chief of Epilesia and President of the ILAE (British Chapter). Prof Shorvon has been awarded numerous prizes for his contributions to epilepsy research, including the Lennox Prize in 2011 from the American Epilepsy Society.
H. Steve White, Ph.D.
Professor and Director Anticonvulsant Drug Development Program, University of Utah, USA
Expertise: Prof White is the scientific director of the NIH-sponsored Anticonvulsant Drug Development Program that was established in 1975 to identify novel anticonvulsant drugs using established animal seizure and epilepsy models. He has published over 250 papers and the program has contributed to the development of nine new antiepileptic drugs for the treatment of refractory partial epilepsy.
Witold Filipowicz, M.D., Ph.D.
Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
Expertise: Prof Filipowicz’s research is focused on mechanistic and regulatory aspects of miRNA function and miRNA metabolism in mammalian cells. He received the Lifetime Achievement in Science Award of International RNA Society in 2011. He has published over 150 papers, including recent work on miRNAs in Nat Struc Mol Biol, Nat Rev Genet, and Cell.
Anna Mapp, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, USA
Director, Program in Chemical Biology
Expertise: Prof Mapp’s research interests lie in discovery of transcription-based therapeutics capable of reprogramming gene expression in diseased cells and her expertise includes design and synthesis of organic molecules and scaffolds to modify proteins and compound screening from combinatorial libraries.
Katja Rateitschak, Ph.D.
Institute of Bioinformatics, University Medicine Greifswald, Germany
Expertise: Theoretical and experimental systems biology, mathematical modelling of chemical kinetics and transport processes in biochemical reaction networks (including neurons) to understand, predict and improve the cellular response to therapeutics.
Michael Bogenstätter, Ph.D., M.B.A.
Cambridge, M.A., USA
Expertise: Representing biopharma R&D and its commercialization. Dr Bogenstätter has worked at Sanofi Oncology (Global Head, Strategy, Project Management and Operations Drug Discovery and Early Clinical Development), MDS Inc. (Vice president Corporate Development and Strategy), Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (Associate Director for Finance Strategic Alliances and for Program Office), The Boston Consulting Group (Project Leader Health Care Practice)
