Towards better health outcomes - What role for pharmaceutical innovation? EPC Policy Brief, 10 December 2015

From the current refugee crisis to ageing populations, and from rising healthcare prices to patients’ rising expectations: demands on European health systems continue to increase. Delivering health efficiently and ensuring the long-term sustainability of healthcare in the face of reduced public budgets requires new thinking – and there is a role for pharmaceuticals as well. Building on the series of discussions organised under Transformations, this Policy Brief focuses on the specific role of medicines and pharmaceutical innovation in improving health outcomes. It considers the state of play of drug innovation, from the development to the deployment of medicines, and the measures needed to make it deliver more for society and the economy, while ensuring that patients in Europe can have access to innovative and safe solutions.

The Limited Influence of the European Union in Armenia and Azerbaijan: A Domestic Explanation. EU Diplomacy Paper 9/2015

This paper seeks to explain why the European Union (EU) has had limited influence in Armenia and Azerbaijan in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Combining approaches from external governance, norm diffusion and structural foreign policy, it offers an explanation based on domestic factors in the two countries: the political regime, state capacity, political structures, domestic incentives and the perceived legitimacy of EU rules. Although willingness to reform appears to exist in Armenia, such willingness remains constrained by the country’s vulnerable geopolitical location and high dependence on Russia. By contrast, none of the domestic preconditions for EU influence identified by the analytical framework were found in Azerbaijan. The author argues that the Eastern Partnership has not properly addressed the extent to which the clan structures feed into informal political practices and enforce the sustainability of an existing regime in both countries, and that, in addition, the EU has underestimated the multipolar environment which the two countries have to operate in, making it unlikely that the current policy can reach its objectives in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Nord Stream II-testing EU and credibility. EPC Commentary, 16 December 2015

In September 2015, Gazprom and major European energy companies (Germany's E.ON and BASF/Wintershall, Austria's OMV, France’s ENGIE and Royal Dutch Shell) signed an agreement to double the Nord Stream gas pipeline’s capacity by 2019. The plan is to transport up to 55 billion additional cubic metres of gas a year to Germany through the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine and other Central-Eastern European countries.

Nord Stream II - yes or no? - Political decision of a political Commission. EPC Commentary, 14 June 2016

When the new European Commission started work in autumn 2014, the president of the Commission took great pride in calling it a ‘political Commission’, which will be big on big things and small on small. Whilst the EU is currently dealing with many crises, reality is that things do not come much bigger than Nord Stream II. Will this be a political Commission that stands by its principles, including respect for liberty, democracy, the rule of law and human rights? Will this Commission have the backbone to politically assess a project that threatens EU unity and its core values, undermines the Union’s commonly agreed commitment to building an Energy Union and facilitates Russia’s aggression against Ukraine? President Juncker’s controversial visit to Russia and meeting with President Putin on 16-17 June is a test-case: will this Commission be ready to defend its commitments and principles when discussing ‘economic issues’?

Manipulation of host hepatocytes by the malaria parasite for delivery into liver sinusoids.

The merozoite stage of the malaria parasite that infects erythrocytes and causes the symptoms of the disease is initially formed inside host hepatocytes. However, the mechanism by which hepatic merozoites reach blood vessels (sinusoids) in the liver and escape the host immune system before invading erythrocytes remains unknown. Here, we show that parasites induce the death and the detachment of their host hepatocytes, followed by the budding of parasite-filled vesicles (merosomes) into the sinusoid lumen. Parasites simultaneously inhibit the exposure of phosphatidylserine on the outer leaflet of host plasma membranes, which act as "eat me" signals to phagocytes. Thus, the hepatocyte-derived merosomes appear to ensure both the migration of parasites into the bloodstream and their protection from host immunity.