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Med Students Dip Their Toes Into IRP Research

Dozens of Doctors-To-Be Spent a Year Working in IRP Labs

NIH MRSP participants (clock-wise from top-right): Maame Amoako, Megan Jiao, Brady Greene, and Abhinav Suri

American medical and dental schools do an excellent job of producing caring and knowledgeable medical professionals, but they don’t always provide opportunities for their students to get a taste of life in the lab. For a few dozen of those students each year, NIH’s Medical Research Scholars Program (MRSP) fills in that gap, welcoming a cadre of future physicians to NIH for a year of research in IRP labs. 

Over the past year, 52 medical students have been getting their feet wet in biomedical research under the guidance of experienced IRP scientists. Whether investigating new ways to detect diabetes or trying to improve ADHD treatment, the 2023-2024 class of MRSP participants received a world-class crash course in how to make new discoveries that will improve patients’ lives. Read on to get your own crash course on some of the exciting research they have been conducting over the past year.

IRP Research Yields Life-Changing Treatments

Highlighting Drugs and Vaccines Stemming from NIH Discoveries

syringe and vials of medicine

On May 3, more than six decades of IRP research culminated in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approving the world’s first vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a disease that puts tens of thousands of Americans in the hospital each year and kills thousands. While the new vaccine, called Arexy, has been getting all the headlines recently, it is only the latest example of a slew of FDA-approved medications and vaccines that might never have existed without the tireless efforts of scientists at NIH.

Indeed, a recently published study led by Mark Rohrbaugh, Ph.D., J.D., a special advisor in the NIH Office of Science Policy, found that inventions developed at NIH have contributed to more FDA-approved products than those created at any other nonprofit research institution in the world over the past five decades. NIH tops the study’s list with 27 FDA-approved products, six more than the study attributed to the combined efforts of all the schools in the University of California system.

Newest Lasker Scholars Ready to Make Their Mark

Exceptional Early-Stage Investigators Push the Boundaries of Translational Research

the 2019 class of NIH Lasker Scholars

Online and print publications are constantly touting momentous discoveries by superstar scientists like CRISPR-Cas9 co-discover Jennifer Doudna or the IRP’s own Kevin Hall, who changed the way we think about weight loss. It can be easy to forget that today’s biomedical pioneers were once young researchers toiling to establish themselves in the competitive environment of modern science.

Each year, a small, exceptionally promising group of scientific up-and-comers become Lasker Clinical Research Scholars through a highly competitive program jointly funded by the NIH and the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. The program presents early-stage physician-scientists with the opportunity to carry out independent clinical research at the NIH for five to ten years. The 2019 class of Lasker Scholars consists of five extremely talented researchers who are now beginning a critical new phase in their careers. Let’s meet them.

Sliding Through Science History, Part 2

Dietzgen Binary Slide Rule

Are you beginning to think that slide rules look alike? If you could see the types and number of scales, you’d understand that each slide rule model is different. There are specialized scales for cubes, spheres, voltage, etc. Check out a few of the slide rules that made history with IRP investigators.

Sliding Through Science History

Edwin Thacher slide rule

What do Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and Apollo astronauts have in common? They all used slide rules! We're highlighting some of the slide rules in our collection used by scientists at the NIH in their quest to improve human health.

NIH’s Undiagnosed Diseases Program Gives 6-year-old Hope

Reblog from Children's Inn at NIH: Family Stories.

Annaleise Knight

Annaleise Knight is an active, outgoing six-year-old. In her hometown of Grayslake, Illinois, she loves riding her bike, swimming, taking ballet and tap lessons, and playing outside on the swings and trampoline with her three siblings, Nicholas, 16, Braden, 7, and Catherine, 4. Although Annaleise has an exuberant personality, she did not always have the energy and strength to do her favorite activities.