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NIBIB 5th Anniversary Celebrates Interdisciplinary Research

• Agenda (Adobe PDF 22K)
• Transcript of Scientific Program - Changing the World's Healthcare through Biomedical Technologies (Adobe PDF 354K)
• Watch the Videocast (Search NIBIB)
• Special Report - The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering Marks Its First Five Years
  Academic Radiology, Volume 14, Issue 12, December 2007, Pages 1448-1454 (Adobe PDF 284K)

The last Astronaut to walk on the moon, a former U.S. Surgeon General, and a Nobel Prize winner were among those who helped NIBIB celebrate its fifth anniversary May 31 and June 1, 2007. The scientific program, “Changing the World’s Healthcare through Biomedical Technologies” at Lister Hill Center Auditorium, highlighted the critical role NIBIB plays in leading interdisciplinary research to develop innovative technologies that improve healthcare. The audience was welcomed and the day’s program was introduced by the current and first NIBIB Director, Roderic I. Pettigrew.

The event began with a dinner the evening before the Symposium, sponsored by the Coalition for Imaging and Bioengineering Research, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Academy of Radiology Research, at the JW Marriott, Washington D.C., on Thursday, May 31. In the opening address former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher said, “Integrating bioimaging and bioengineering will be critical to research in the future and to the new medical paradigm.” Indeed, “NIBIB is at the forefront of a lot of what we must do to face the changing medical paradigm,” which includes an aging population, increasing diversity, and growing global interconnectedness according to Satcher. 

Former U.S. Senator and Apollo Astronaut Harrison Schmitt, the last man to have walked on the moon, gave the evening’s keynote address and described the synergies between space exploration and healthcare research. Schmitt, who chairs the NASA Advisory Council, envisioned an even stronger relationship between NASA and NIH. He described the “extraordinary science legacy” of the Apollo program and emphasized the importance of continuing to build a reservoir of young scientists, engineers and other skilled workers. “We need another Sputnik generation but one not just related to space exploration,” Schmitt said.

He also provided a few lessons learned from the Apollo program, including what he defined as “the greatest mistake after Apollo.” “We made a big investment of tax dollars and then walked away,” he said. “We didn’t amortize our investment.” Future space exploration such as traveling to Mars will require improved understanding of biomedical issues facing humans such as muscle atrophy, bone loss, and immune system reactions. Schmitt urged more research on these and other biomedical issues because “compared to how we do medicine on earth, we are in the dark in space.”

The evening’s most poignant moment came when NIBIB Director Pettigrew presented the inaugural NIBIB Landmark Achievement Award to magnetic resonance imaging pioneer Paul Lauterbur’s widow, Joan Dawson, who accepted the award on behalf of the Nobel Laureate. Lauterbur died in March. In accepting the award Dawson, who was visibly moved, said, “This is quite a singular moment for me. Paul was very grateful he would be receiving this award. Thank you.”

Emerging Technologies

The scientific program, “Changing the World’s Healthcare through Biomedical Technologies” was held at Lister Hill Center Auditorium on Friday, June 1. The program highlighted the increasing role NIBIB plays in fostering interdisciplinary research of innovative technologies that are improving healthcare today and into the future. NIH Director Elias Zerhouni outlined the critical role NIBIB plays in supporting emerging technologies to quantify and measure biological systems. “NIBIB is the missing piece that needed to exist to accelerate progress across biological disciplines in the 21st century,” Zerhouni said. He noted that NIBIB was created to provide a home for the discovery of new technologies, new techniques, and new approaches to solve the major challenges faced in the healthcare system today.

Establishing the NIBIB was not easy, and both the bioengineering and biomedical imaging communities struggled to gain Congressional approval for formation of the Institute. Some of the key players who worked diligently to establish the Institute, C. Douglas Maynard of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Shu Chien of the University of California, San Diego, Stanley Baum of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Robert Nerem of the Georgia Institute of Technology, provided some of the history of the formation of the Institute. In addition, some of NIBIB’s unique achievements were highlighted, including the introduction of innovative policies and programs such as the Clinical Resident Research Supplement Awards, the Quantum Projects Initiative, and the Nagy New Investigator Awards.

To celebrate the achievements of magnetic resonance imaging pioneer and Nobel Laureate Paul Lauterbur, Waldo Hinshaw, an MRI pioneer and an early colleague of Lauterbur’s, related the key role that Lauterbur played in creating the technology. Hinshaw described Lauterbur as both a conductor and mentor and noted that he was adept at gathering people to work on the new technology and fostering a fellowship among them. Lauterbur understood the importance of blurring the boundaries between disciplines as evidenced by the title of his 2003 Nobel lecture, “All Science Is Interdisciplinary – From Magnetic Moments to Molecules to Men.” Lauterbur not only contributed to the science of magnetic resonance but served as its champion and advocate. “He was very good at convincing people that this was a technology that warranted attention,” Hinshaw said.

Institute of Medicine President Harvey Fineberg opened his talk on “Healthcare Challenges in the 21st Century” with praise for NIBIB’s swift start: “This Institute has launched in such a remarkable way and opened up avenues for research that really didn’t exist.” After describing what he called the “healthcare predicament” that includes a failure to insure all Americans, rising costs of healthcare, deficient quality and safety, and workforce shortages, Fineberg noted that “NIBIB has every opportunity to make a huge difference in these areas and to resolve these needs.”

Pursuing New Ideas Despite Opposition

Reinforcing the importance of pursuing basic research and promoting novel approaches, Charles Townes, 1964 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, described the path he took to develop the Maser and its more famous offspring, the Laser. “Really new ideas are resisted by the experts,” said Townes. “You must convince people that basic research is a good investment.”

As he refined the theory behind the Laser, Townes was told repeatedly that he was wasting money and should drop the project. Convinced his idea would work, Townes continued his research and was rewarded when graduate student James Gordon alerted him during a class that the Maser was working. Physics colleagues such as Nobel Laureates Niels Bohr and John von Neumann didn’t believe Townes was on the right track, though von Neumann finally acknowledged that a working Maser was possible. Even when he collaborated with his brother-in-law Arthur Schalow, a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories who thought the lab would benefit from the patent, AT&T patent lawyers initially balked because they doubted light could be useful for communications. Townes and Schalow wrote the patent themselves, noting how an optical Maser could be used in communications, and a patent was granted on behalf of Bell Labs in 1960.
“There was no basic new idea in the Maser. All the physics was known before. You have to bring ideas together in the right way,” Townes said. He described different lasers and their applications and pointed out that he had not foreseen biomedical applications of the laser. As he closed his talk he offered “best wishes to all of you as you continue to produce the future.”

Displaying his own creativity and inventiveness, Ralph Weissleder, Director of the Center for Molecular Imaging Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, gave attendees a look into the future of personalized medicine. Referring to NIBIB as the “clock that makes our lab tick,” Weissleder discussed an emerging optical imaging technique that uses near-infrared light to detect early lung cancers in animals. Because of its high spatial resolution and detection sensitivity, the technique “will have tremendous implications for biomedical research,” said Weissleder,

In another technique, multiple biological processes are imaged simultaneously using nanoplatforms with multiple channels. Similar to a “lab on a chip,” Weissleder and his group have created nuclear magnetic resonance on a chip. “We can multiplex and phenotype rare cells in real time,” says Weissleder. “In less than a minute we can profile blood.” The chip will be able to test for cancer and diabetes, and has the potential to be left in tumor beds and provide feedback on therapeutics.

A key challenge facing researchers in the field of regenerative medicine is the inability to expand cells outside the body. Inadequate biomaterials and blood supplies have made it all but impossible to grow viable cells and cell networks. Over the last five years, Anthony Atala, Director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, has pioneered new methods to successfully grow cells outside the body. This body of work is a remarkable achievement and shows great promise for treating a wide array of diseases and disorders. His group has engineered many tissue types and some organs, including tracheas, vaginas, and bladders. Atala emphasized that his lab’s success is a result of a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the work of some 400 researchers over 18 years.

Interdisciplinary Success

Successful endeavors in medicine and biology often benefit from input from other disciplines. While discussing the training of young scientists, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson noted that NIBIB provides the critical linkage of the physical sciences with the biological sciences and highlights the promise of interdisciplinary work. She challenged the audience to “think more broadly about what interdisciplinary research means” and stressed the need to develop modeling techniques to study living systems in real time. “We are a long way from being able to model living systems. It will take intellects of many in different fields” to achieve this she said.

A panel of four young investigators described their paths to their current positions and noted the importance of NIBIB in filling the gap created by the closing of the Whitaker Foundation. “NIBIB stepped in and saved us from financial ruin,” panelist Joe Tien of Boston University explained, adding that “NIBIB is more willing to fund high risk work than other sources of research support.”

Work across disciplines has meant great progress for NIBIB’s first grantees, James Duncan and Dennis Spencer of Yale University. Their team approach, which combines physics, engineering, and clinical applications, has improved epilepsy surgery outcomes. In addition, their exciting work has created new techniques to map the brain’s electrical network during surgery and to investigate brain structure, function, and biochemistry.

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