As simple as DNA

Erik De Clercq talks to Matt Williams about winning the EU lifetime achievement award for research

Professor Erik De Clercq is still in shock after winning the lifetime achievement award at the European inventor of the year 2008 ceremony in Ljubljana earlier this month. As well as being grateful for the recognition of the value of the work he has done, De Clercq is proud that his work has brought scientific fame to Belgium. “I was, of course, happily surprised at being chosen for the award. I was actually unaware of this award before I was told of my nomination. I didn’t even know how to get nominated, let alone to be chosen! It truly was a total surprise,” he said. “It is an honour for a small country like Belgium, and for myself as a native Belgian.”

De Clercq’s work has centred on antiviral treatment, which led to his contribution to the discovery of the compound tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, now used as part of a ‘drug cocktail’ method for treating HIV. The global statistics regarding HIV and other diseases serve to underline the continuing significance of antiviral discoveries today, one of the reasons why De Clercq says he is keen to continue pursuing antiviral medicine. “In my career, I’ve gradually taken up all viruses in my attempts to treat them and to develop antiviral agents. Today, in terms of numbers, there are around 40 million people living with HIV, 170 million people with hepatitis C and almost 400 million people with hepatitis B. In the area of viruses, these are the three major players. Recently, however, there has also been a steady increase in cases of the dengue virus. I personally among the scientists believe that this is the most important new virus. It’s an old virus, but a newly emerging one. At the moment, we don’t have any vaccines or any drugs for dengue. For me, this is a tempting challenge to take on.”

De Clercq’s most famous contribution concerns antiviral agents, which prevent retroviruses from taking over their host cells and producing millions more viruses, which in turn go on to infect other cells and, eventually, defeat the body’s defences. De Clercq’s nucleotide analogues achieve this by copying the shape and contours of the four building blocks of DNA, causing the virus to ‘believe’ that the drug is a building block from which it can make other DNA. Thus the virus incorporates the drug into a growing DNA strand and, once incorporated, the drug then blocks the reproduction process of the virus.

Both the commission and parliament have said many times that keeping research within Europe and promoting home-grown innovation is a priority for the EU, particularly at a time when there is increasing competition from the US, China and India. De Clercq himself spent just over two years on a scholarship at Stanford University in the US, and says that from his own experience he can see the country’s appeal for researchers and scientists. “The first time I went to the US, everything was new. Everything was easy. It was a new world that opened up. Since then, I have travelled there much more often, and it has become less exciting as the gap between the US and Europe gets narrower. Still, at the end of the day, if I wasn’t working in Europe then there are still attractive prospects for me in the US. For example, I was in Atlanta recently and Georgia State University have asked me to work there.”

When it comes to European research, in particular the issue of private funding, the real problem, says De Clercq, is to do with the nature of business itself. There has been too much flexibility, he says, particularly with European companies, too many mergers and acquisitions, all of which means that the business landscape is constantly in a state of flux. Adding to the problem, says De Clercq, is the fact that there is also something of a divide in the academic community concerning industry-funded innovation. He himself, however, remains firmly in support of industry’s involvement in scientific discoveries. The professor says that in his experience, companies are prepared, up to a certain level, to give support without any strings attached. He is scornful of an attitude that he has encountered that says liaising with industry is tantamount to selling one’s soul to the devil.

“I’ve had these discussions many times, and most of my colleagues do not want to have industry involved in these initiatives. That is a very bad attitude. I have even had people in my team with this approach. It is very short-sighted. Industry is not like that, at least not in my experience.” De Clercq says that industry is vital if European research, in particular initiatives such as the EIT and Galileo, are to make genuine progress. “I would certainly applaud all these initiatives but you have to be careful that they receive sufficient support, or else they will just die after a while. I myself am one of the big proponents in favour of getting industry involved because I have seen that without industry, without their help, we cannot achieve what we want to achieve.”