NIH opens research hospital to outside scientists

Ten projects that will enable non-government researchers to conduct clinical research at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. were announced today. Through these three-year, renewable awards of up to $500,000 per year, scientists from institutions across the United States will collaborate with government scientists in a highly specialized hospital setting. The NIH Clinical Center is the largest hospital in the nation devoted entirely to clinical research.
“This initiative will provide top scientists outside NIH the opportunity to utilize the sizable resources of our clinical center,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “The collaborative process they undertake with researchers here on campus will set a framework for important biomedical discoveries and needed treatments.”

NIH funds scientists outside of its organization, called extramural researchers, and government scientists who work for NIH directly, called intramural researchers.  Although intramural scientists often collaborate with scientists outside the NIH campus, the new grants now will provide extramural researchers from academia and industry with direct access to the broad resources of the NIH Clinical Center.  Outside scientists will be able to test promising laboratory discoveries using emerging technologies and tools and collaborate on clinical protocols, often for extraordinarily rare diseases, in partnership with NIH investigators to help advance disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

“We are very excited about opening the doors of the Clinical Center to our extramural colleagues who will bring additional cutting-edge research projects and new partnerships that will enrich ongoing efforts translating scientific discovery into tomorrow’s cures at the Clinical Center and in partnering institutions around the country,” said John I. Gallin, M.D., director of the NIH Clinical Center. 

The awards will support projects on a variety of diseases and health conditions that affect children and adults in the United States and worldwide.  The new projects will include:

• a clinical trial for a new drug treatment for Nieman Pick C, a rare, fatal disease is caused by the loss of ability to break down cholesterol and other fats
• a clinical trial of a new drug treatment to prevent relapse in a form of childhood leukemia
• a clinical trial of the genetic makeup of certain types of prostate cancer, to gain insights that could yield new information for prevention and treatment efforts,
• development of a new catheter that can be threaded into the heart, to relay high quality images needed for making surgical and treatment decisions
• a long term follow-up study of patients treated for Cryptococcus gattii, an airborne fungus that can cause severe, sometimes fatal, respiratory infections
• a clinical trial of a new vaccine to prevent malaria.

“These are the first awards in this unique program.  We are offering this exciting opportunity again this year,” said Sally Rockey, Ph.D., NIH deputy director for extramural research.  “Sharing technology, which drives so much of what we do today, along with opportunities to take basic science and bring it into clinical applications, will allow us to generate findings that tell us what works and what doesn’t work in health care and medicine.  Most importantly, we need to do all we can to stimulate collaborations among the country’s best scientific minds -- in and outside the NIH campus.”

Applications for the next round of competitions for the awards are due on March 20, 2014

Below is a list of the NIH institutes and their awards for extramural/intramural research partnerships, which is also available at http://www.cc.nih.gov/translational-research-resources/index.html

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

Grant No. 1 U01 HD079065-01
Title: A Phase 1 Dose Escalation Study of Vorinostat in Niemann-Pick C1 Disease
Dr. Daniel Ory, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
Dr. Fred Maxfield, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York City
Dr. Steven Walkley Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, New York City
Dr. Forbes Porter, NICHD

Grant No. 1 U01 HD079068-01
Title: Birth Defects: Moebius Syndrome and Related Facial Weakness Disorders
Drs. Ethylin Jabs, Ke Hao and Bryn Webb of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City
Dr. Elizabeth Engle, Boston Children’s Hospital
Dr. Irini Manoli, and Dr. Lori Bonnycastle, National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
Dr. Brian Brooks and Dr. Edmond FitzGibbon, National Eye Institute (NEI)
Dr. Carlo Pierpaoli, NICHD

National Cancer Institute

Grant No. 1 U01 CA183030-01
Title: Therapeutic Elimination of Stem Cells for Relapsed Pediatric AML
Dr. Yang Liu, Dr. Reuven Schore, Dr. Joseph Devaney, Dr. Pamela Hinds, and Dr. Jichuan Wang, Children’s Research Institute at Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Dr. Terry Fry, and Dr. Katherine Warren, National Cancer Institute (NCI)

Grant No. 1 U01 CA183027-01
Title: Integrative Molecular Imaging and Sequencing of Prostate Cancer
Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan,  Dr. Rohit Mehra Dr. Nallasivam Palanisamy Dr. Dan Robinson Dr. Yi-Mi Wu University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor
Dr. W. Marston Linehan, Dr. Murali Cherukuri, Dr. Peter Choyke, Dr. Deborah Citrin, Dr. James Mitchell, Dr. Peter Pinto, and Dr. Ramaprasad Srinivasan, NCI
Dr. Bradford Wood, NIH Clinical Center

Grant No. 1 U01 CA183012-01
Title: Stem Cell Gene Therapy Following R-EPOCH for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in AIDS Patients
Dr. John Zaia Dr. Joseph Alvarnas , Dr. David DiGiusto, and Dr. Amrita Krishnan,
Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, Los Angeles
Dr. Kieron Dunleavy, Dr. Richard Little, Dr. Frank Maldarelli, Dr. Wyndham Wilson, NCI

National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

Grant No. 1 U01 HL121838-01
Title: MRI-safe 3DL Intracardiac Ultrasound Catheter for Cardiovascular Intervention
Dr. F. Levent Degertekin , Dr. Steven Freear, and Dr. Paul Hasler, Georgia Tech Research Corp. Atlanta
Dr. Thomas Sorensen, Dr. Robert Lederman, Dr. Michael Hansen, Dr. Ozgur Kocaturk, Dr. Kanishka Ratnayaka, and Dr. Vandana Sachdev, NHLBI

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

Grant No. 1 U01 AI109657-01
Title: Prospective Cohort Study of Cryptococcosis
Dr. Kieren Marr and Dr. Darin Ostrander, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine, Baltimore
Dr. Peter Pappas University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine
Dr. Thomas Kozel, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno
Dr. Peter Williamson, Dr. Sarah Browne, Dr. John McCoy, NIAID
Dr. Julie Harris and Dr. Shawn Lockhart, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Grant No. 1 U01 AI109695-01
Title: Anti-IL-12p40 Treatment of CVID Enteropathy: Gene Expression/Microbiota Analysis
Dr. Andriy Morgun, , Dr. Natalia Shulzhenko, Dr. Rebecca Vega-Thurber, and Dr. Jesse Zaneveld, Oregon State University, Corvallis
Dr. Warren Strober, Dr. Ivan Fuss, and Dr. Michael Yao, NIAID

Grant No. 1 U01 AI109697-01
Title: Molecular, Immunological, and Clinical Dissection of STAT1 Hypermorphic Mutations
Dr. Jean-Laurent Casanova, The Rockefeller University, New York City
Dr. Steven Holland and Dr. Joshua Milner, NIAID

Grant No. 1 U01 AI109700
Title: PfSPZ Challenge with Chemoprophylaxis: Phase 1 Trial to Assess Liver Stage Drug
Dr. Stephen Hoffman, Dr. Anusha Gunasekera, Dr. Adam Richman, Dr. Kim Lee Sim, Dr. Eric James, Dr. Peter Billingsley, Sanaria Inc., Rockville, Md.
Dr. Patrick Duffy and Dr. Sara Healy, NIAID