ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 14 – chemistry
5.7 Evaluation of future plans
The future plans exploit and expand the existing research areas and
are well chosen and are very good to excellent. The future plans include
applying the technology platforms in the department, not only to the
discovery of disease related biomarkers such as in Breast Cancer, but the
future aims are to expand the application areas to predict tumor relapse
and resistance to therapy. The ultimate aim is to be able to select the
optimal treatment for individuals, based on a simple blood test (personalized
medicine). These aims build on recent advances using new areas of
research which are highly innovative and promising, such as the Global
Proteome Survey system that will enable array based proteomics to be
converted into a discovery tool and Context Independent Motif Specificantibodies,
that react to motifs in proteins and protein families.
5.8 Future potentials and possibilities
An additional area to be include in future research could include assay
development and the qualification or validation of the biomarkers (or biomarker
panels) identified by the department. Such validated assays could
allow the determination of the significance of the results in the clinical
setting. To further expand on the applications and biomedical relevance
of the targets and biomarkers identified in the research programmes,
increased involvement in clinical trials would be beneficial in the future
to determine the potential to translate the research results into the clinic.
5.9 Gender and equal opportunity issues
From the details given, the department consists of 36 members (35 Full
Time Equivalents), of these 61% are women (of which 67% of the total
number of employees are not permanently employed). In the period,
1998–2002 the number of PhD students were 50%; from 2002 to 2007,
there were 58% women; and in 2007, 75% of the PhD students were women.
However, at the more senior positions, of the 3 members of Academic
staff of professorial level and the 1 lecturer position, (all of which are
permanently employed), there are no women. While the numbers are low,
these figures are in line with the dramatic fall-off of Women researchers
at the higher levels internationally (as detailed for example by the EU,
in its annual ‘She-Figure Reports’). Sweden has had specific recruitment
incentives to increase the numbers of Females in higher positions within
academia in the past. While these were controversial at the time, they
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