Executive Summary

2. Dissemination and use
Over 2005 and 2006, the specific support action 'the European Lipidomics Initiative (ELIfe)' has resulted in four successful workshops where stakeholders from basic science, industry and medicine met to discuss cell biological, technological, industrial and clinical aspects of lipidomics. In addition, ELIfe contributed lipidomics sessions to four networking meetings, one on life sciences, one on the bioscience of lipids and two industrial lipid meetings. These workshops and meetings culminated in the concluding general meeting in October 2006, attended by a broad audience of 250 scientists. At the occasion of this meeting a special journal issue was published on 'Lipidome and Disease' [16]. The results of the the specific support action were reported in a series of policy papers in the scientific literature [4-6, 8-13], and a policy briefing on lipidomics and health of the European Science Foundation [14]. In addition, ELIfe contributed to a number of technical papers on lipid classification and data handling [1-3] and to a 500 page document entitled 'Enabling technologies for studying the genome, proteome and cytome of the lipidome.' [7]. This document will be presented on the Lipidomics Expertise Wiki Portal (LEP-Wiki): http://www-cgi.uni-regensburg.de/Klinik/Klinische_Chemie/lipidWiki/, to allow a direct interaction with the scientists in the field. Interviews with ELIfe members appeared in various journals [17,18].

A survey was prepared based on registrations in the Lipidomics Expertise Platform www.lipidomics-expertise.de with the purpose of identifying stakeholders and providing insight in the available expertise, which can be used for contacting specific centers for collaboration. A 260 page document entitled 'Lipid droplets and lamellar bodies as dynamic organelles connecting influx, efflux, and storage of lipids: Translational research towards human disease' was prepared as the basis for a grant proposal under FP7 by a number of ELIfe members plus other scientists. This proposal 'LipidomicNet' was recently selected for funding. A EuroCore theme proposal under the name EuroMembrane [15] has been accepted by the European Science Foundation and a call for applications is expected for early 2008.

In summary, we believe that the European Lipidomics Initiative has created many opportunities for crossover between basic science and medical and commercial applications, and that it has inspired stakeholders to seek contact and establish strategic alliances. Because national funding agencies and policy makers value the European dimension, the project will impact on both the European and the national level in shaping policies and research activities, both in applied and fundamental research. One such field is that of nutrition and health. Technology development will allow more detailed analyses of lipid patterns in diseased and healthy persons, which will drive discussions with the food industry concerning the potential positive and negative effects of different types of (lipid) nutrition on human health with new health policies drawn up as a result.