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Management Committee Meeting
and combined
Meeting of Working Groups 1 and 2

Gdansk
June 20 - 21, 2005

Draft Minutes

Centre of Excellence in Bio-safety and Molecular
Biomedicine "BioMoBiL", Gdansk

1. Welcome to participants
The MC meeting is opened by Juerg E. Frey, the chairman of the action, at 16.10 on Monday 20.6.2005.

2. Adoption of agenda
The draft agenda for the Meeting in Gdansk is approved by all MCMembers.
No additional requests are mentioned.

3. Minutes of last meeting
The minutes of the third MCMeeting held in Helsinki in 2004 are approved with the exception of one change (an address-change) that reached the Chairman via e-mail.

4. Report from the Scientific Officer
News from the COST office: Chairman J. Frey informs the Working Group leaders via e-mail about the letter of the scientific officer Bouktje Stol from April, where she pointed out that all available STSM money from the central STSM fond for 2005 has already expired and that there are no further requests accepted this year.
Status of the action: The actual status of the action is available for all interested participants and collaborating scientists on the internet under http://www.COST853.ch
Number of signatories: Until the day of the meeting, 21 out of 33 COST countries as well as one associated country, have signed the action (see http://www.COST853.ch). This is the same status as at the last MCMeeting.
Budget status, budget allocation process: see below, 5. Budget planning 2005

5. Budget planning 2005
Budget planning was performed at a dedicated meeting in November 2004 in Brussels, attended by the chairpersons and all working group leaders as well as B. Stol (scientific secretary) and Chr. Peeters (scientific secretary assistant). At that time it was decided that the WG4/5 meeting in November in Lyon will be paid from the 2006 budget. However, in April 2005 the information came from the side of Brussels that the Lyon-Meeting will have to be financed by 2005 budget.

After the MCMeeting, J. Frey discussed the topic with John Williams, earlier and new Scientific Officer that will replace B. Stol. The meeting in Lyon was confirmed with 40 total participants, 32 eligible for reimbursement. The meeting in Zurich on 16th December for a total of 20 participants of whom up to 16 will be eligible for reimbursement is provisonally planned, however, the number of participants will depend on the final level of reimbursements from the Gdansk meeting.
Via e-mail, J. Frey will inform the working group leaders about the decision.

6. STSM status, applications
As reported by Neil Boonham during the meeting, the second STSM workshop in York in October 2004 was very successful. The question, whether we should plan for other workshops were discussed. Jürg Frey informed the MCMembers that the participants at both STSM workshops would have been interested to go deeper into the topics of probe design and data handling.
Neil Bonham offers to do another workshop in York, UK. J. Frey suggests to combine the workshop, by including hands-on experience on slides with bioinformatics from the produced data. It was discussed that the workshop could be organized as a ring test, which was also planned for York 2004. The idea of such a workshop was supported by the MC members and it was decided that there should be another STSM workshop in 2006 if this is approved by COST Brussels. There will be a decision at the next meeting in Lyon after having had the opportunity to discuss the topic with the scientific officer in Brussels. As there is another WG3 (Bioinformatics) meeting in Switzerland, the participants of that meeting may take the occasion and prepare an outline of the organization of a STSM meeting on bioinformatics in Switzerland. To organize such a workshop, J. Frey asks the members to inform him via e-mail on the probe design program they use as well as on what the advantages and disadvantages of these programs are.

J. Frey points out that, independent of the workshops, individual STSM are still possible but will have to be delayed to 2006.

7. Publications, annual report, mid-term evaluation
At our last meeting from August 16-17in Helsinki, Finland, Jørgen Jacobsen from the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences was attending as rapporteur for the Technical Committee for Agriculture, Biotechnology and Food Sciences to perform the mid-term evaluation of our action. As he told us at our social dinner he was positively impressed and he indicated that his report will be favourable.
For the next annual report (deadline end of 2005), the working group leaders are asked to send again a short information on the proceedings in their field.

As in the earlier meetings, the participants were encouraged to send their publications that relate to COST 853 to be listed on our homepage.
J. Frey thanked for the authors that acknowledged COST853 in their publications. He stresses that this is a important feature as references for potential follow up projects.

8. Evaluation
Peter Bonants, working group leader of WG1, nucleic acid based microarrays, informed on the process of a database including methodical information of the involved scientific groups in COST853. Topics include extraction methods, amplification methods, probe design, target genes, available spotting facilities etc. An earlier E-mail request for information from P. Bonants had had an unsatisfactory feedback. Only about 10 persons responded and it may already be necessary to be updated. Therefore, there will be one further attempt with the deadline of September 1st, 2005. From Oktober 1st the information will be put onto the web.

9. Request for new members
No request for a new membership is open.

10. Non-COST participations
No request for a new membership of non-COST countries is open.

11. Web news http://www.COST853.ch
Jürg Frey makes the yearly call for information that can be put on the web, including links, presentation, interesting meetings etc.

12. Progress report of working groups
As already mentioned in point 7, a written statement will be expected by the working group leaders by the end of the year. The chairman will send a reminder, December 6, 2005 is deadline! The working group leaders can delegate the task to the single labs of the country to collect information. There would also be the possibility to ask country delegates to collect information on the progress in their country.

13. Long-term planning
G. Adam initiated a cross-COST Action meeting in 13./14. October 2005 in Hamburg to evaluate possibilities of collaboration among the different groups. This meeting will also be used as the COST Action 853 year 2006 organisation meeting. Therefore, the WGleaders were asked to participate. MCMembers were asked to submit their ideas and inputs to the corresponding WGleaders.

The MCMembers discuss about a possible follow up of this COST action that will end in 2007, either as another COST, or as a FW7 project. A follow-up COST could include a scientific rather than a developmental topic. Topics discussed are "soil health", "harmonization and quality of ring testing" EPPO may strongly support such an action.

Chairman J. Frey suggests to think about collecting material to summarize our activity and experience, as COST offers the opportunity to publish books or papers. It is suggested that each active microarray scientist of the group could write 4-5 pages and the work is collected in a booklet.

14. Time and place of next meeting
Peter Bonants from the Netherlands offers to host a combined MCM and WG1/2 meeting in 2006. The offer is thankfully accepted. The date may be around end of May and mid June.

15. Varia
P. Bonants informs about the 2008 ICPP meeting in Turin. As he is invited to address a part in the field of diagnostics and potential speakers, he askes MCMs to send any input and ideas to him.

The meeting is closed at 17:30.