In a message dated 10/01/2003 8:52:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> WASHINGTON -- From creating drug-hunting databases to including more Main
> Street doctors in medical research, the
> National Institutes of Health pledged a series of changes on Tuesday
> intended to help turn scientific discoveries into
> better health care, faster.
>
> Consider it "turbocharging the NIH," said Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the agency's
> new director.
>
> The NIH, with a $27 billion budget, is the government agency primarily
> responsible for conducting and financing medical
> research. It has spurred crucial science, such as deciphering the secrets of
> human genetics. But critics have called
> the giant agency, with its 27 separate institutes and centers, too unwieldy
> to ensure that research findings quickly
> benefit the patients who need them most.
>
> With the unprecedented pace and sophistication of new discoveries, "There's
> no doubt medical research is at a critical
> point in its history," Zerhouni said Tuesday.
>
> His new five-year, $2.1 billion "road map" for NIH lays out plans to ensure
> the most promising of these complex
> biological discoveries get the proper attention and to remove barriers that
> slow transformation of those discoveries
> into treatments.
>
> "This is truly not business as usual," Zerhouni said.
>
> Many of the new initiatives won't be noticed by the average person -- they
> involve such things as getting scientists
> from different, highly specialized fields to work together better.
>
> "I think the average person may not tomorrow see an effect," said Dr. Alan
> I. Leshner, chief executive of the American
> Association for the Advancement of Science. But the NIH plans are "laying
> out an important vision for where biomedical
> science can and will go, and how to ensure that that gets translated into
> real-life improvements in the health of the
> American people. In that case, it's very significant."
>
> And some of the top plans could make it easier to conduct studies of
> patients.
>
> For example, most patient research currently is conducted by hospitals and
> universities. NIH hopes to establish a group
> of community-based physicians trained specially for research such as studies
> of experimental therapies. They would be
> part of a series of research networks that could be tapped to conduct
> important studies rapidly, similar to networks
> NIH already has set up for cancer and AIDS.
>
> More community doctors could open research to more patients -- only 1
> percent of people with Parkinson's disease and 3
> to 4 percent of cancer patients ever enroll in studies -- and to problems
> that don't get enough attention, such as
> pain, Zerhouni said.
>
> Patient involvement in research can be crucial to improving care, he said.
> He noted that life expectancy for cystic
> fibrosis improved from 10 years to 40 years thanks largely to patient groups
> who helped develop 198 specialized care
> centers and a nationwide data registry, allowing research to be done more
> quickly.
>
> In addition, NIH wants to standardize regulatory requirements for patient
> studies so that every researcher follows the
> same rules -- they now differ hospital to hospital -- and to standardize
> databases so that research findings can be
> more easily shared.
>
> Critics have long warned there is too little oversight to ensure patient
> protection in many studies. Asked if getting
> more doctors involved could increase that risk, Zerhouni called the planned
> new standards and training crucial.
>
> Among NIH's other plans:
>
> * Establishing molecular and chemical libraries open to any scientist,
> potentially useful in hunting new drug
> candidates.
>
> * Creating biomedical computing centers capable of handling the deluge of
> new information about genes and proteins.
>
> * Helping small biomedical companies tap into the NIH's resources for more
> industry collaboration.
>
> * Encouraging more creative research with special grants of $500,000 a year
> for five years for scientists with ideas
> too risky to win the NIH's conventional financing but that would mean
> breakthroughs if the gambles paid off.
>
> Beginning the changes next year will cost $130 million that will come from
> existing resources pooled by each of the
> NIH's institutes, Zerhouni said. He would not detail where the money was
> siphoned from, but insisted no programs were
> cut.
>
> * __
>
> WOW,  This is the best news I have heard since the Defense Dept. got into
> the act of research and neuroprotection.  Finally, the NIH is coming into the
> real world.

Gerry

>
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