The NIH Catalyst
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. Fostering Communication and Collaboration The nihCatalyst A Publication fob NIH Intramural Scientists of of Director Volume 13 Issue 1 a January-February National Institutes Health i Office the e , 2005 Nanomedicine Initiative: Roadmap Recap: A New Pathway to Discovery A Year’s Worth With Evolving Turns and Destinations Of Milestones by Karen Ross by Fran Pollner he aim of nano- raised for her “flawless execu- medicine, one of tion of a very complex process” T nine major NIH by NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, P Roadmap initiatives, is to NIH Roadmap coordinator Dushanka treat disease by intervening Kleinman delivered a first-year at a molecular level. It is a progress report at the De- Roadmap close cousin of nanotech- cember 2004 meeting of the Advi- nology, which is con- sory Committee to the [NIH] Director. cerned with building de- In general, she said, 2004 could vices that are 0.1 (i or less be characterized as a year of seed- in size. (For reference, the ing new tools and technologies for head of a pin is 2,000 jli, a the team science and clinical research typical human cell is ap- of the future. Among the year’s proximately 5 p, and a Intrigued by the Invisible: NEI Director Paul Sieving achievements: large protein complex is (left) and NHGRI tech development guru Jeffery Schloss Establishing four National Centers (right), co-cha irs of the NIH Roadmap Na nomedicine approximately 0.005 p.) for Biomedical Computing (with more Implementation Group flank Richard Fisher, director of Nanomedicines, for ex- , to be funded in 2005) the NEI Corneal Diseases Program and Nanomedicine Launching the Patient-Reported ample, could beof tiny ma- Project team leader Outcomes Measurement Information chines that compensate for System, with seven grants, six to primary the function of defective proteins or very bust systems that operate at the “nano” research centers precisely targeted pharmaceuticals that scale. Funding 20 nanomedicine concept- have no side effects. But he does sound a cautionary note. planning grants, which will form the so- However exciting and promising the licitation base for Nanomedicine Devel- Deeper Levels of Quantitation field of nanomedicine may be, it is also opment Centers in 2005 and 2006 (see Before these treatments can become a field in its infancy. story, page 1) a reality, scientists first need a detailed, It is extremely hard to predict what Funding 21 interdisciplinary re- quantitative understanding of cellular direction nanomedicine research will search exploratory centers and identify- ing institutional barriers to interdiscipli- processes. Many of today’s approaches take in the near future, Schloss says, and nary research to biochemistry and molecular biology this uncertainty has presented special Conducting an inventory of clinical are much more descriptive than quanti- challenges to the nanomedicine imple- research networks (500 already identi- tative, says Jeffery Schloss, director of continued on page 4 fied) to identify best practices Technology Development Coordination, H Launching 12 pilot studies to assess NHGRI, and one of the chairs of the the feasibility of integrating and increas- CONTENTS implementation group that directs the Nano-sampler ing the interoperability of clinical re- Roadmap nanomedicine initiative. 1 search networks and to pave the way Nanomedicine: 6-7 The nanomedicine initiative, Schloss for NECTAR (National Electronics Clini- A New Pathway Translational says, scientists to take cal Trials and Research network) encourages an To Discovery Research: Careers Designing the scope for engineer’s view of the cell—to think of planning Roadmap Recap ...And RAID as circuits to grants to be funded in 2005 and 2006 for molecular pathways and For Core Services regional translational research centers, as make careful measurements of physical well as for core services similar to the and chemical processes that take place. From the DDIR: 8-11 Intramural NCI RAID program (see stoiy, page 7) IRP Round-up 2004 Nanotechnology will contribute both Accomplishments Completing the first of the round the tools to make these measurements 11-15 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (see and, ultimately, the devices that can re- Recently Tenured <http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/pio- Ethics Forum: model molecular circuits. Furthermore, neer/>), with more than 1,300 nominees Author! Author! 16 Schloss observes, biological pathways vying for the nine awards Kids Catalyst: are themselves excellent examples of ro- New Fogarty Scholar Striped Ice ^ The NIH Catalyst . i - From the Deputy^Director for Intramural^ Research Intramural Research Accomplishments his issue of The NIH Catalyst includes There is our annual enumeration of selected probably T intramural scientific achievements. no better At a time place in when budgets the world are tightening than NIH and scrutiny for both and restric- laboratory tions are in- and ap- creasing, it is a plied re- heartening re- search in minder of the immunology. The research highlights in- quality and clude several examples of contributions impact of our work. The special intramu- to basic immunology, such as cytokine ral environment that facilitates this science research, as well as specific contributions is what attracted most of us to the NIH to HIV pathogenesis and vaccine devel- and what keeps us here through thick and opment, including progress in both HIV thin. and SARS. In addition to the extraordi- In my talk at the NIH research festival nary concentration of talent at NIH in these this year, I focused on three components areas, we have several energetic trans-NIH of the intramural program that have been grassroots scientific interest groups under especially critical in the umbrella of the its success. Richard Immunology Inter- Florida, in his book est Group, as well The Rise of the Cre- as the Vaccine Re- ative Class, referred search Center, that to these as the three facilitate communi- T’s : Technology, cation and collabo- Michael Gottesman Talent, and Toler- ration in these re- ance (for out-of-the- search areas. box and creative en- Creativity in the deavors as well as a intramural program diverse work-force). is frequently mani- The abbreviated list fested as novel in- of accomplishments beginning on page 8 terdisciplinary studies, amply illustrated in highlights all three of these aspects of the the list of annual achievements, that break intramural program. down barriers between Institute-specific NIH continues to be pre-eminent in the research programs. Because we tolerate discovery and characterization of genes in- and encourage structural biologists in volved in disease, especially in cancer, NIDDK to work on HIV-AIDS and mental illness, Alzheimer’s disease, or cardiac physiolo- and neuro- gists in NHLBI to develop imaging tools logical prob- relevant to neurobiology, we are able to lems such as make novel and innovative contributions Parkinson’s to biomedicine. disease. Ow- Obviously this brief synopsis of achieve- ing to the es- ments cannot do justice to the extraordi- tablishment of nary breadth of intra- an NHGRI in- mural science. I hope tramural pro- it will serve to remind gram and ge- our scientific staff of netics core fa- why NIH is a very cilities several special place. years ago, we had a big —Michael Gottesman headstart on disease-gene discovery, and Deputy Directorfor Intramural Research this technology has spread to most of the intramural program, facilitating bench-to- bedside applications of basic genomic re- search. The new Clinical Research Center will undoubtedly facilitate these advances. 2 , January — February 2005 11 * 11,11 (IT "I 1 Ethics Forum Accountable Authorship: Comments from NIH Scientists byJoan Schwartz Assistant Director, OIR Who Took the Research Ethics Computer Course n July we launched the Research Eth- guarantor of the paper. The journals ducing lots of ics Computer Course (<http:// agree that “gathering funds for the LPUs (Least I researchethics.od.nih.gov>), and project, paying salaries, providing a Publishable I notified all of you about it through a conducive environment, being the Units).” column in The NIH Catalyst (July-Au- spokesperson, or providing published Kovac has gust 2004 issue). Since then, I have re- reagents or procedures are not activi- written a com- ceived approximately 300 comments, ties that warrant authorship without a mentary, pub- via the built-in e-mail address for re- significant contribution to the scientific lished in Chem- sponses, and am pleased to report that content of the paper” (PNAS 101:10495, istry & Biodiv- Joan Schwartz 1 : 99 percent of them have been highly 2004). They believe that these criteria ersity ( 6 0 6 complimentary. will protect against ghost or gratuitous 2004), in which he notes that the quality Some of the comments have raised authorship. of chemistry papers has been declining stimulating questions about specific top- These new guidelines represent ex- despite increasing sophistication of meth- ics and/or quiz questions or cases, and tensions of the rules for authorship pro- ods, reagents, and instrumentation. the NIH Committee on Scientific Con- vided in the course. It would be worth- One reason is that the “number of pa- duct and Ethics has decided to address while to discuss these in one of your pers whose experimental results cannot those. Future issues of the Catalyst will future lab meetings. be reproduced because of lack of data contain responses to issues raised about Paul Kovac, NIDDK, raised a differ- presented, as well as the number of com- the cases involving human subjects. We ent kind of publication issue of con- pounds described for the first time that will also write about specific authorship cern to him. In the course module on have not been properly characterized, is questions regarding one of the cases. publication and authorship, page 3 increasing at an alarming rate.” In this column, I would like to ad- states: “Even though each paper should Kovac, like many of us, is convinced dress more generic authorship issues contain sufficient information for the in- that “the progress of science is not di- raised by three of our intramural scien- formed reader to assess its validity, the rectly proportional to the number of tists.