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NIH By the Numbers: Challenge Grants, Stem Cell Comments, and Conflict of Interest Rules
A flood of grant applications for Recovery Act funds, a heap of comments on the proposed stem cell policy, and feedback on how to manage conflicts of interest among researchers—here’s a look at some of the key numbers related to the big policy stories at the National Institutes of Health:
20,894: The total number of Challenge Grants applications received by the NIH.
At least $200 million of Recovery Act funds will support these new grants. These applications come on top of the 16,312 regular applications received for the current funding cycle. Some 18,000 reviewers will help read and score them all, a workload that has NIH Center for Scientific Review Director Antonio Scarpa worried about the time it will take for each reader and the inevitable low acceptance rate. The projects that are funded will generate jobs, grow the economy, and support the search for cures.
49,015: The total number of comments the NIH received on its draft Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research.
Jocelyn Kaiser at ScienceInsider reports that the Institutes’ policy chief estimates the amount is roughly equivalent to when the NIH issued draft guidelines on the same issue in 1999.
$5,000: The threshold for earnings that should trigger mandatory disclosure under financial conflict of interest rules for NIH-funded researchers, as recommended by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of American Universities.
The two major academic associations, which both represent significant proportions of the institutions where scientists conduct NIH-funded research, submitted their joint comments in a letter Wednesday. NIH grantees are currently obliged to report a financial interest if they earn more than $10,000 in income or own more than $10,000 in stock plus 5 percent interest in a company, but the AAMC and AAU believe the threshold is too low to ensure research integrity. The recommendations were in response to the NIH’s request for comments on promoting objectivity in research. Patti Tereskerz recently explained the complexity of managing the conflicts of interest that result from the necessary mix of public and private research funding in Science Progress—including those that arise from corporations funding research through foundations and nonprofit institutes.
Comments on this article
There is no doubt that conflict of interest is a major issue for the research community. When the original regs were issued by PHS in 1995, they included a comment that “institutional conflicts of interest” would be dealt with later. “Later” has finally arrived in the new notice of proposed rulemaking on conflicts of interest. Very few universities have policies on institutional conflicts. It would be useful for the PHS to stress the importance of developing such policies in subsequent rulemaking notices and consider offering some guidance.
Keep on blogging!
Mark Frankel
June 14th, 2009 at 11:35 amFirst, I must commend the fine comment by Mark Frankel who warns us of the importance of being aware of Conflict of Interest.
No one wants a repeat of the infamous failure in approving a treatment that killed too many and was recalled after losing huge amounts of money. I am sure the Judge thought it well deserved but we must not depend on such a process to find and recall stem cell treatments that might produce tumors. How much testing is enough? That is where the Conflict of Interest may surface, if you know what I mean.
Did you see the photo of a rat with a full ear grown on its back? Yes, it was from an stem cell experiment.
Actually, I am all in favor of animal testing and my lack of medical knowledge keeps me from understanding why the function and processes involved in stem cells could not be studied first on rats. It may kill the rat but it is better for a rat to die than a human, right? They could even infect a rat with a disease and then test the effect of some stem cell types on healing, or killing.
The bottom line, that is never mentioned, is that doctors do not yet know how the stem cells works, or how many different types of stem cells are there, or what are their differences and the implications.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:52 pmThe only bigger medical mystery that I know or, rather, that I do not know, is how the brain works, but I will save that for a proper time.
Yet, do you remember how many times you heard the assertion of the “Great Healing Potential” of stem cells?
The Partisans are absolutely sure they are absolutely right if doctors would only be allowed to begin testing the many known stem cells types to find out which ones heal what and which ones kill who? Is that the best the so-called Medical Scientists can do? Will they lose their license if 10 or more patients grew ears on their legs? Quickly removed, free of charge, of course.
How can you find out what one stem cell will do without actually using human testing? Was that the reason given in the Third Reich? I remember my teacher showing us…