NIH’s Building 3 was once a researcher’s paradise. For more than half a century, it was chock-full of remarkable scientists and bustling with activity. Before it closed in 2001, it had housed some of NIH’s best biomedical investigators—pioneering malaria researchers, the first female board-certified heart surgeon, a fledging leader of the pharmaceutical industry, three future NIH directors, 15 scientists who were inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and five eventual Nobel laureates.
NIH intramural investigators may soon have company at the NIH Clinical Center (CC) when a new grant program offers access to extramural researchers who want to partner with them.
NCCAM Has a New Scientific Director and a New Focus
BY HEATHER DOLAN
With the arrival of new scientific director Catherine Bushnell, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is redefining its intramural program. Bushnell, an internationally recognized pain and neuroscience researcher, has launched a program on pain research.
Cynthia Dunbar means business. Monkey business, that is. Dunbar, who heads the Laboratory of Molecular Hematopoiesis in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), is investigating human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), the precursors to all blood cell types. As it turns out, rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) and human HSCs are very similar.
For the past 10 years, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) has harnessed the talents of engineers, biomedical researchers, and clinicians to tackle challenging medical problems. In June, NIBIB celebrated its 10th anniversary with a daylong scientific symposium that showcased the latest biomedical advances.
The IRP Web Site To Offer Central Listing of NIH PIs
BY BEN CHAMBERS, SPECIAL TO THE NIH CATALYST
Finding information on the approximately 1,200 intramural principal investigators (PIs) spread across 23 NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) has often depended on networking with other scientists or browsing multiple Web sites. Until now.
National Science Foundation Director Shares an Engineer’s Perspective on Malaria Research
BY CAROLYN GRAYBEAL, NIAAA
Engineer-scientists have long been intrigued by the physics of large organ systems such as the circulatory system and the skeletal system. But now, they are gaining insights into disease-induced changes in the physical properties of cells and molecules those systems.
