NIH Launches Interdisciplinary Research Consortia
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap for Medical Research
will fund nine interdisciplinary research consortia as a means
of integrating aspects of different disciplines to address health
challenges that have been resistant to traditional research approaches.
The funding of these consortia represents a fundamental change
in both the culture within which biomedical and behavioral research
is conducted and the culture within the NIH where research projects
are normally managed by an individual Institute or Center (IC).
"The Interdisciplinary Research programs within the Roadmap embody
a central goal of the Roadmap — to help transform the way
research is conducted," said NIH Director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni. "These
programs are designed to encourage and enable change in academic
research culture to make interdisciplinary research easier to conduct
for scientists who wish to collaborate in unconventional ways."
As opposed to multidisciplinary research, which involves teams
of scientists approaching a problem from their own discipline,
interdisciplinary research integrates elements of a wide range
of disciplines, often including basic research, clinical research,
behavioral biology, and social sciences so that all of the scientists
approach the problem in a new way. The members of interdisciplinary
teams learn from each other to produce new approaches to a problem
that would not be possible through any of the single disciplines.
Typically, this process begins with team members first learning
the language of each other's discipline, as well as the assumptions,
limits, and valid uses of those disciplines' theoretical and experimental
approaches. Experiments are then designed in ways that cut across
disciplines, with, for example, an experiment based in one discipline
producing data that can be correlated — or otherwise connected
to — data generated in experiments based in another discipline.
The common understanding by the team of the disciplines involved
assures that this tight linkage across the disciplines is valid.
These consortia will not only develop new ways to think about
challenging biomedical problems, but will provide a stimulus for
academic research culture change such that interdisciplinary research
becomes the norm. The consortia address directly several current
barriers to interdisciplinary research. The strategies for accomplishing
this include: (1) dissolving departmental boundaries within institutions;
(2) providing recognition of team leadership within the projects;
(3) cross-training students in multiple disciplines; and, importantly,
(4) changing the NIH approach to interdisciplinary research administration.
"The Roadmap is a learning laboratory both scientifically and
administratively. Forging inter-disciplines is a new enterprise.
These consortia will focus on a variety of different areas, bringing
individuals of diverse backgrounds together to tackle complex problems.
These consortia also represent a new paradigm for NIH administration
that will manage interdisciplinary programs through multiple NIH
ICs in a truly trans-NIH manner," said Dr. Alan Krensky, the newly
appointed Director of the Office of Portfolio Analysis and Strategic
Initiatives (OPASI), which funds the NIH Director's Roadmap initiatives.
Management of the interdisciplinary research consortia will allow
the NIH to act as a single entity rather than a collection of 27
individual ICs.
The consortia consist of multiple research projects with multiple
principal investigators, core research support facilities, training,
career development, and education components. These components
will be divided among several ICs for programmatic oversight. To
maintain the interdisciplinary research program as a whole, the
grants will remain linked electronically through unique identifiers,
and the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) and OPASI
will oversee the entire program.
The missions of the consortia range broadly from deciphering the
basis of neuropsychiatric disorders, to developing new approaches
to drug discovery and targeted gene therapy, to preserving fertility
in women with cancer, to understanding the fundamentals of the
aging process, to a coordinated and systematic approach to regenerative
medicine and obesity, to probing the relationship between self-control
and addictive behavior, and to developing targeted molecular therapies
for neurodegenerative disorders. The interdisciplinary consortia
will integrate numerous disciplines including the basic biological
sciences, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, biostatistics,
biophysics, chemistry, gene therapy, stem cell biology, mechanical
and tissue engineering, reproductive endocrinology, neurology,
behavioral research, and the social sciences.
"Many future scientific advances will be made at the interface
of traditional disciplines. The Roadmap Interdisciplinary Research
Consortia have been designed to enable the conduct of the biomedical
and behavioral research of the future — multiple NIH Institutes
and Centers supporting multiple investigators with different scientific
backgrounds, often from different institutions — all of
whom are coming together to perform research on complex, real-life
problems," said Dr. Larry Tabak, the Director of the National Institute
of Dental and Craniofacial Research, who co-chaired a working group
that helped identify the best interdisciplinary science that should
be funded. "The Roadmap Interdisciplinary Research Team continues
to define the barriers to interdisciplinary research and persists
in refining the best solutions to overcome these barriers. The
consortia represent a very important step forward along this learning
curve."
The consortia will be funded at a level of $210 million over 5
years. Each consortium has an overall principal investigator that
is responsible for coordinating the efforts of the individual grant
components. The interdisciplinary consortia, overall principal
investigator, and their institution are as follows:
Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics-Coordinating
Center
Dr. Robert Bilder, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Interdisciplinary Research Consortium in Geroscience
Dr. Dale Bredesen, Director and CEO, The Buck Institute for Age
Research, Novato, California
NeuroTherapeutics Research Institute
Dr. Paul Hagerman, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine,
University of California, Davis
Taskforce for Obesity Research at Southwestern (TORS)
Dr. Jay Horton, Associate Professor, University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center, Dallas, Texas
SysCODE: Systems-Based Consortium for Organ Design and
Engineering
Dr. Richard Maas, Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital,
Boston, Massachusetts
Northwest Genome Engineering Consortium
Dr. Andrew Scharenberg, Associate Professor, Children's Hospital
and Regional Medical Center, Seattle, Washington
Genomic Based Drug Discovery
Dr. Edward Scolnick, Director, Psychiatric Initiative, Broad Institute
of MIT and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Interdisciplinary Research Consortium on Stress, Self-Control,
and Addiction
Dr. Rajita Sinha, Professor, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
The Oncofertility Consortium: Fertility Preservation for
Women
Dr. Teresa Woodruff, Professor, Northwestern University, Chicago,
Illinois
For complete descriptions please visit: http://www.ncrr.nih.gov.
The Office of the Director, the central office at NIH, is responsible
for setting policy for NIH, which includes 27 Institutes and Centers.
This involves planning, managing, and coordinating the programs
and activities of all NIH components. The Office of the Director
also includes program offices which are responsible for stimulating
specific areas of research throughout NIH. Additional information
is available at http://www.nih.gov/icd/od/.
The NIH Roadmap for Medical Research is a series of far-reaching
initiatives designed to transform the Nation's medical research
capabilities and speed the movement of scientific discoveries from
the bench to the bedside. It provides a framework of the priorities
the NIH must address in order to optimize its entire research portfolio
and lays out a vision for a more efficient and productive system
of medical research. Additional information about the Roadmap can
be found at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov.
NCRR provides laboratory scientists and clinical researchers with
the environments and tools they need to understand, detect, treat,
and prevent a wide range of diseases. With this support, scientists
make biomedical discoveries, translate these findings to animal-based
studies, and then apply them to patient oriented research. Ultimately,
these advances result in cures and treatments for both common and
rare diseases. Through collaborations and networks, NCRR connects
researchers with one another and with patients and communities
across the nation. These connections bring together innovative
research teams and the power of shared resources, multiplying the
opportunities to improve human health. For more information, visit www.ncrr.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) The Nation's
Medical Research Agency is comprised of 27 Institutes
and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health
and Human Services. It is the primary Federal agency for conducting
and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research,
and investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common
and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs,
visit www.nih.gov. |