Back to Front PageVOLUME 6, NUMBER 4

NIH Funding Bolsters Medical Schools' Research Programs

By Jennifer Proctor

Scott Whittemore, Ph.D., is a faculty member at the University of Louisville and the scientific director of the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center. Last year, the NIH awarded the center an $8.5 million grant, which supports a variety of research, including examination of the use of stem cells to repair damaged spinal tissue and enhance regeneration.

Three years ago Congress embarked on a bipartisan effort to double the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) budget by 2003. The effort - actively supported by the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research Funding, which the AAMC convenes - has already achieved more than half its goal, and the Bush administration has proposed a 13.4 percent increase in the agency's budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Midway through the campaign, medical schools around the country are already benefiting from increased research funding.

"You never know where a fertile mind is going to make the next leap," says Nancy Martin, Ph.D., who hopes that it will be at the University of Louisville, where she is the vice president for research. In the years since the doubling of the NIH budget began, the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center and its three teaching hospitals have seen more NIH dollars come their way. And with the help of these dollars, leaders at the center are positioning it to become a premier research institution, which supports discoveries "from the bench to the bedside."

To do this, the school is investing in its facilities. In 1999, it opened the Donald E. Baxter Biomedical Research Building, a 115,000-square-foot facility that houses research in pediatrics, oncology, and genetic and molecular medicine. In addition, the center is building a new biomedical research building, scheduled for opening by fall 2002. The Delia B. Baxter Building will be used for research on cardiovascular disease, aging, and structural biology, and will allow medical and dental researchers to work collaboratively with engineers from the university's Speed Scientific School.

"With these investments, the university is better able to contribute to and support the NIH research mission and our researchers are in a better position to compete for NIH funding," Dr. Martin says.

The center's efforts to emphasize its research mission with the help of NIH dollars are already paying off in cutting-edge research. The center houses a variety of researchers whose work includes "inoculating" the heart against future heart attacks, fighting disease with bone marrow, and investigating a cure for paralysis caused by spinal-cord injuries. "The fact that we're smaller than a lot of places puts us in a position to be more nimble and innovative," Dr. Martin says.

University of Louisville researchers are enjoying additional funding not only from the NIH but also the state of Kentucky. For example, the $400 million Bucks for Brains program matches donor dollars in order to attract top-notch faculty to the state and keep them there. Both federal and state funding have enabled the university to nearly triple its expenditures on scientific research from $22.8 million in 1995 to $64.1 million in 2000.

The University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine (UCLA), for its part, has long been considered a research powerhouse. Leonard Rome, Ph.D., UCLA's senior associate dean for research, says the school is focusing much of its research on the areas of genomics, the study of genes and their function; proteomics, the science of proteins and how they interact and affect the body; and bioinformatics, the science of informatics as applied to biological research.

Dr. Rome says the future is about cooperation. The nation's attention is focused on translational research - research that draws upon the collaborative efforts of basic and clinical scientists - and UCLA is restructuring its facilities to accommodate this growing trend. UCLA's lung cancer program is a prime example, he says. Recently, the school's Jonsson Cancer Center was designated a Specialized Program of Research Excellence by the NIH's National Cancer Institute. The resulting $13.9 million NIH grant is meant to encourage translational research by bringing laboratory scientists and clinical researchers together in a highly organized environment.

While the doubling of the NIH budget has been overwhelmingly positive, Dr. Rome admits that the more money UCLA researchers get in grants from the NIH, the more UCLA has to spend to maintain its facilities and research instruments. "I think the NIH should take a hard look at providing more funding for schools' research infrastructures. The facilities at schools keep getting older every year, and it's hard to raise money for remodeling or the purchase of large instruments."

Like UCLA and the University of Louisville, the Emory University School of Medicine is improving its infrastructure and research enterprise. The school has a new basic science building, scheduled for completion this fall, and existing research space is being expanded and enlarged.

"Recruitment and retention of the best researchers is the way you prepare for the future, and the facilities are the essential currency with which you bargain," says Robert Rich, M.D., executive associate dean of research and strategic initiatives at Emory.

Dr. Rich says faculty morale has been lifted by increased research support from the NIH. "You can feel in the air that the enthusiasm for biomedical research has really returned." He explains that the increased NIH funding means that the best investigators' grants are funded. "I think this means that more science gets done," he stresses.

The advances in biomedical research both in the works and on the horizon should be cause for the entire medical education community to support the NIH campaign, Dr. Rich adds. "The doubling of the NIH funding has been enormously important for science and for the country. One can see it not only at Emory but any place you go."

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19 July 2001