[Promotion of research in surgery by the Swiss National Foundation]

The Biology and Medicine division of the Swiss National Science Foundation finances about 1200 research projects. Only 24 (2%) of them originate from surgical departments or clinics. If we look at amounts, the share is even smaller, namely, 1.4%. Compared with the fields a pure "Medical Research Council" would cover, the share is 3.5% or 2.8% for the number of the amount, respectively. The problems of surgical research are only one special case of the problems in clinical research in Switzerland. Our new TANDEM program should encourage better collaboration between researchers in basic biological sciences and those in clinical medicine.