Emphasising the European Union's Commitment to Cancer Research: a helicopter view of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.

This article discusses the efforts undertaken in the European Union toward basic, translational, and clinical cancer research on prevention, early diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, cancer control, quality of life, and survivorship.

Basic and clinical proteomics from the EU Health Research perspective.

The European Union (EU) is one of the main public funders of research in Europe and its major instrument for funding is the Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7). The bulk of funding in FP7 goes to collaborative research, with the objective of establishing excellent research projects and networks. Understanding the functions of proteins is essential for the rational development of disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, therefore the EU has largely invested in proteomics, in particular for technology development, data standardisation and sharing efforts, and the application of proteomics in the clinic.

Europe combating cancer: the European Union's commitment to cancer research in the 6th Framework Programme.

As one of the major health issues in Europe, cancer was a research priority in the 6th Framework Programme (2002-2006). About 485 million euros were devoted to this theme, which allowed funding of 108 multidisciplinary transnational projects. A significant part of them was large-scale initiatives addressing complex issues through a broad combination of competences.

Functional regulation of semaphorin receptors by proprotein convertases.

PLEXIN genes encode receptors for secreted and membrane-bound semaphorins. It was proposed that the extracellular domain of plexins acts as an inhibitory moiety, preventing receptor activation. Here we show that plexin-B1 and plexin-B2 undergo proteolytic processing in their extracellular portion, thereby converting single-chain precursors into non-disulfide-linked, heterodimeric receptors.

Cloning and sequencing of a novel metallothionein gene in Mytilus galloprovincialis Lam.

Metallothionein (MT) is a ubiquitous, metal-inducible protein with an important role in the homeostasis and in the detoxification of heavy metals. This work reports the cloning and sequencing of a MT gene encoding a MT isoform (MT20-IIIa) in the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Lam, a lamellibranch mollusc known to accumulate and to detoxify large amounts of metal. The MT gene, lacking the 5' promoter region, is 1865 bp long and has a tripartite structure consisting of three exons and two introns.