NIH presents new research 'roadmap'

[Guest guest]

I think that this is just a snowjob to have more control over research direction

and subjects. It means that the major specialinterests and politicians will be

able to call the shots even more than they do now. Forget about looking out for

the health of the citizens. They will be even more looking out for the health of

megabusiness and cronies.

 

The ones to benefit from all this will be mainly the pharmacuetical companies

and the politicians that they own.

 

They will transfer much more of the cost of doing business to the government

and eventually the taxpayers.

 

Frank

 

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031001/04

 

October 1, 2003

 

NIH presents new research 'roadmap'Broad strategy aims to change the way

institutes orchestrate medical research | By Eugene Russo

 

 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will adopt a radically new strategy for

pursuing basic and clinical research, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni and a panel of

NIH institute directors announced yesterday (September 30) at a press briefing

in Washington, D.C. Zerhouni told the audience that medical research was at a

" critical point in its history " and that despite the many recent advances in

science and medicine, the field of biology has also grown exceedingly complex.

 

The so-called " NIH Roadmap, " which is primarily geared toward extramural

academic centers, represents a major revamping of the way NIH funds research,

Zerhouni said. The new approach aims to take on, as a group of institutes,

projects that no one institute could tackle on its own for lack of resources,

expertise, or infrastructure.

 

" These initiatives are integrated to accelerate our knowledge, to translate that

knowledge into effective prevention and treatment strategies, and in many ways

transform the way we conduct research and the way we accelerate the translation

of that research to the bedside and eventually to clinical practice, " Zerhouni

told the audience.

 

He added that the research initiatives are intended to encourage the sort of

cutting-edge, risk-taking research that hasn't been typical of the NIH. " If this

were easy, it would have been done already, " said Zerhouni.

 

First conceived of a year ago, the roadmap received input from 300 leaders in

academia, industry, government, and the public. It includes 28 initiatives

organized under three major umbrella themes: " New Pathways to Discovery, "

" Research Teams of the Future, " and " Re-engineering the Clinical Research

Enterprise. "

 

The broad range of initiatives will cost a projected $130 million in fiscal year

2004 and an estimated $2.1 billion over the next 5 years. The roadmap will be

paid for, according to Zerhouni, not by new money, but by siphoning off roughly

half a percent from the budgets of each of the NIH's 27 institutes and centers.

 

Zerhouni told The Scientist that all of the roadmap initiatives were well within

reach, even given likely modest NIH budget increases in the next several years.

" We had many more good initiatives, " he said. " But we didn't want to make

promises we couldn't deliver on. " Zerhouni said that the roadmap represented the

" minimum set of compelling initiatives that we could not, not do. "

 

The " New Pathways to Discovery " initiatives will produce tools to target

diseases and hasten improvements in human health, National Human Genome Research

Institute Director Francis Collins said. The initiatives will focus on molecular

libraries and molecular imaging, bioinformatics and computational biology,

nanomedicine, and structural biology building blocks and pathways.

 

Collins laid out a few of the major goals: Through a network of screening

centers and a shared public database, universities and hospitals will gain

better access to small molecules technology—typically the purview of

biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. (Though Collins noted that the NIH

is not looking to take over the complex and expensive task of drug development

that is typically the purview of big pharma.)

 

Also, new national technology centers for networks and pathways will help to

prioritize which new pathways to target. " We've identified many of the parts

list entries for human cells—gene transcripts, proteins, metabolites,

organelles, cellular compartments, " he said. " But we don't' know enough about

how they work in concert, how the systems are wired together. "

 

The roadmap also proposes national centers for biomedical computing to explore

massive datasets coming from things like the human genome, protein structures,

and environmental exposure data.

 

The " Research Teams of the Future " initiatives will focus on high-risk research,

interdisciplinary research, and public-private partnerships. Speaking at the

press briefing, Stephen Straus, director of the National Center for

Complementary and Alternative Medicine, emphasized a move away from typical

multidisciplinary research. The intent, he told The Scientist, will not be to

have individuals from different fields write grants together, as is now

commonplace, but to " take people from diverse fields and put them in the same

room " in hopes of tackling complex biological problems and spawning " unexpected

insights or whole new scientific fields. "

 

To encourage greater team collaboration between industry and NIH-funded

investigators, the roadmap will establish a central NIH point of contact called

the Director's Liaison for Public–Private Partnerships, an office that will

assist members of industry in finding partnership opportunities. The NIH will

also establish new interdisciplinary research centers, the planning grants for

which will be offered immediately.

 

To encourage " out of the box " thinkers, said Straus, a new set of NIH Director's

Innovator Awards will be established. The awards, $500,000 per year for 5 years,

are aimed at high-risk research. Ten awards will be offered in the first year.

" We recognize many will fail initially, " Straus told reporters.

 

As part of " Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise, " the roadmap seeks,

in part, to harmonize clinical research regulatory requirements, integrate

clinical research networks, develop technologies to improve the assessment of

clinical outcomes, and offer better training for clinicians.

 

Stephen I. Katz, director of the National Institute of Arthritis and

Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, described plans for new initiatives for early

career development of clinical researchers and new " translational core centers "

to facilitate translational research with tools like novel reagents and toxicity

testing. A new " national electronic clinical trials and research network " will

facilitate sharing of data and resources. The NIH will also attempt to harmonize

and simplify confusing regulatory requirements that currently impede the conduct

of clinical research and discourage making careers in it, said Katz.

 

The first four roadmap Requests for Applications were posted yesterday, for

Metabolomics Technology Development, Exploratory Centers for Interdisciplinary

Research, National Technology Centers for Networks and Pathways, and National

Centers for Biomedical Computing.

Links for this article

National Institutes of Health Roadmap

http://www.nihroadmap.nih.gov/

 

P. Park, " Reform US research, " The Scientist, February 17, 2003.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030217/06/

 

E. Russo, " Report recommends major changes at the NIH, " The Scientist, July 30,

2003.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030730/05/

 

TM Powledge, " Whither NHGRI? " The Scientist, April 16, 2003.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030416/03/

 

W. Schatz, " NIH names computational boss, " The Scientist, June 4, 2003.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030604/03/

 

T. Agres, " Large-scale science, " The Scientist, June 23, 2003.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030623/03/

 

 

 

 

 

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