Michael Gottesman

TRANS-NIH INTRAMURAL SCIENTIFIC INITIATIVES: WHY? HOW? WHEN?

Last year, with the encouragement of NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, the NIH intramural research program (IRP) set out to identify important scientific initiatives that would be difficult for any one institute to support, that would exploit the special characteristics of the IRP, and would scientifically draw from and benefit multiple NIH institutes and centers.

After a series of meetings involving many of our principal investigators and scientific leadership, we settled on three major initiatives with cross-cutting impact: (1) Immunology, Autoimmunity, and Inflammation, (2) Molecular Imaging from Molecules to Cells, and (3) Systems Biology.

For nearly a year, groups have met to define the nature of each of these initiatives and how to bring them to fruition. The resulting consensus proposals on how to proceed were then presented to me and to Dr. Zerhouni—and, on October 22, 2007, to a larger group of NIH scientists and scientific leadership at a retreat held for this purpose.

Why?

Discussion at this retreat focused not only on the substance of the proposals, but also on the rationale for this new approach to science at NIH. In the past, virtually all of our scientific initiatives have been investigator-initiated or have sprung from programmatic imperatives of the institutes (for example, the Vaccine Research Center). This worked well for the IRP during the time of continuously rising budgets (real increases adjusted for inflation of approximately 2 percent per year from 1980 to 2000) when new funding was available to each institute or center to create a venture capital fund for high-risk, high-impact novel science, or even through the development of new intramural programs (such as the NHGRI IRP).

Even so, the IRP failed to be at the cutting edge of some new technologies and/or model systems—such as yeast genetics to study cell biology, and RNAi—until they were well established in academia or in industry. Now with real budgets dropping in the IRP for the past four years, it has become increasingly difficult to initiate large-scale new scientific initiatives, and the need for trans-NIH cooperation and planning has become obvious.

Some of the larger institutes have had the flexibility to provide core support for expensive new technologies (such as transgenic mice, microarray facilities, biostatistical support, and clinical research infrastructure), but the smaller institutes have definitely been disadvantaged.

All of these factors, plus the obvious observation that working collaboratively across NIH will increase creative input and reduce inefficiency and duplication, led to the trans-NIH initiatives concept.

How?

The original three proposals listed above were specifically chosen because they could provide infrastructure for the work of many different scientists throughout NIH and had the potential to revolutionize how we do science.

Neal Young, chief of the Hematology Branch, NHLBI, will lead the Immunology initiative. He proposed a Center for Human Immunology, which will occupy physically proximate space for common laboratories and core facilities to facilitate complete phenotyping of the human immune system and abnormalities in autoimmune diseases and in inflammatory processes that underlie or affect common diseases like cancer, asthma, and heart disease. Most of the studies will involve the NIH clinical center and human subjects.

Richard Leapman, scientific director of the new National Institute for Bioimaging and Bioengineering, will lead an effort to develop new imaging technologies for studying molecules and cells, beginning with a center in which senior fellows from physics, computational biology, and engineering can interact with NIH biologists to address the need for higher resolution, real-time molecular-imaging technologies.

The Systems Biology proposal is the least advanced of the three. The proposal involves recruitment into leadership positions as well as the creation of an incubator space for interaction of current and newly recruited NIH scientists. Most of us appreciate that systems approaches will begin to replace the more reductionist approaches we have taken in our laboratory and clinical studies, but how this necessary evolution will occur is still unclear.

When?

Both the scientific community and the NIH director expressed frustration at the October 22 retreat about why it has taken so long to get these initiatives off the ground—although we all realize that achieving true consensus among the working groups takes time.

With nearly every square foot of space on the NIH campus currently occupied with active laboratory and clinical science, finding appropriate space to initiate these programs has not been a trivial undertaking. But we have recently figured out how to reorganize existing space to some advantage. With budgets tight everywhere, funding was hard to find, especially before goals and programmatic needs were clearly defined. To jumpstart these three projects, the NIH director has provided $4 million from his Discretionary Fund for equipment needed in the instrument cores. Individual institutes and centers are expected to support the modest needs of these programs, at least during a period of evaluation, but most support will be in kind as the centers that are established reach out to the affiliate members in various institutes and centers. The NIH director will meet with the scientific directors to discuss fostering implementation of these centers. We fully expect the Center for Human Immunology and the Molecular Imaging Center to be functioning in calendar year 2008, and the Systems Biology initiative will soon begin to identify leadership.

Getting NIH scientists and scientific leadership together to discuss these ideas has been a new and rewarding experience in itself. We anticipate a continuing dialog between scientific leadership and scientists on how to ensure that the NIH IRP remains a vital, creative contributor to biomedical research. Committed to this objective, the NIH director has proposed a Grand Challenge program that provides one-time funding to launch innovative science that might otherwise not be initiated. Novel scientific ideas will be sought. As the existing trans-NIH initiatives transition to more stable footing, the transitioning of leadership is also underway.

—Michael Gottesman
Deputy Director for Intramural Research

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