NIH New Research Paradigms

[Guest guest]

From the Los Angeles Times October 1, 2003

A Road Map for Biomedical Frontier

By Zitner, Times Staff Writer

The NIH, (National Institute of Health) seeking to bring together

experts from many

specialties to speed discoveries, unveils a plan for funding,

experiments.

Saying that medical breakthroughs are coming less frequently from lone

scientists in individual laboratories, the National Institutes of Health

on Tuesday unveiled a $2-billion plan that would encourage biologists,

computer experts, physicists and other

specialists to work together and would provide them with new tools to

conduct

experiments.

" This is truly not business as usual for medical research, " said Dr.

Elias A.

Zerhouni, director of the NIH. The goal, he said, is to move laboratory

discoveries more quickly to patients.

With a budget of $27 billion, the NIH funds a huge array of experiments

at universities, hospitals and its own institutions.

Zerhouni said the agency would spend $2.1 billion over five years on its

new " road map for medical research, " a collection of 28 initiatives

designed to accelerate

scientific discoveries.

The proposals attempt to deal with the recognition that most biological

research is no longer carried out simply by a single scientist with a

test tube and a microscope.

To study how dozens of genes interact to cause disease, for example,

biologists must use computer software and work with data management

experts. To create new ways of taking pictures of cells, they work with

physicists. To create materials that help cells

to grow into artificial organs, they work with engineers and materials

specialists.

" The NIH roadmap is being driven by changes in the science. We need

changes in our community to adjust to 'big science' from what has always

been a cottage industry, " said Dr. Korn, senior vice president for

research at the Assn. of American Medical

Colleges.

The NIH proposal calls for new funding for research and training

programs that include multiple specialties.

It also aims to build shared collections of research tools that are

common in pharmaceutical companies but remain largely unavailable to

university and hospital

researchers.

For example, the NIH wants to build a large library of molecules that

might turn out to be useful drugs, along with new centers with automated

equipment that can test those molecules for their effect on genes

Currently, for example, a scientist who determines that a specific gene

is linked to Parkinson's disease has few ways to explore whether that

discovery can lead to a treatment, said Dr. Francis , who leads

the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute.

In the future, that researcher would be able to tap the NIH molecule

library and automated machinery to try to find molecules that alter the

workings of that gene, said. Some of them may yield new clues

about how the gene works or even point toward a treatment.

Some of the NIH proposals are aimed at improving research on patients.

The agency wants to connect traditional community-based doctors with

researchers at hospitals and universities who test new treatments on

patients.

The NIH hopes that this will allow researchers to set up new studies

more rapidly and that more patients will be drawn into the studies. Only

3% to 4% of cancer patients, for example, currently enroll in studies on

new treatments, pain management and other

elements of the illness, Zerhouni said.

The NIH will also make at least 10 grants annually to scientists

pursuing ideas considered creative but risky — a response to complaints

that the agency backs only " safe " proposals. Each grant would offer $2.5

million over five years.

" NIH has always been guilty of not enough blue-sky thinking, of being

too rigid on how you have to do lots of experiments on something before

you can win support for it, " said Dr. Leroy Hood, president of the

Institute for Systems Biology, a nonprofit

independent research institution in Seattle.

For example, Hood said, the NIH rejected two grant applications he made

in the 1980s for the first gene-sequencing machines, which later helped

revolutionize biology. The agency is " focused on the present and not on

the future and so this new element is a terrific addition to what the

NIH already does well, " he said.

As an example of a high-risk proposal it might support, the NIH cited

" preventive biosensors " that would scan the body for molecular signs of

disease and eliminate them. While ideas like this " might read like

science fiction, they are much closer to reality

than one might imagine, " the agency said.

Korn said that universities and the NIH would have to make " cultural

changes " to encourage scientists to join large research groups.

Scientists often want to work alone or in small groups so they can be

the principal author of papers that announce significant discoveries.

Universities give tenure, and the NIH gives grants, to scientists who

are lead authors of important papers.

Korn said scientists would need assurance that if they joined a large

group, they would be rewarded even for being the fourth or fifth author

on a paper. " This will affect how universities evaluate scholarship and

make tenure decisions, " he said.