BY JOHN I. GALLIN, DIRECTOR OF THE NIH CLINICAL CENTER
The Clinical Center is opening its doors—and providing access to its special resources—to investigators from academia and industry. A formal funding opportunity for new partnerships between outside and intramural investigators at the CC promises to bring new intellectual excitement to the intramural program while enabling clinical research projects that might not otherwise occur.
Kuan-Teh Jeang, an accomplished virologist and chief of the Molecular Virology Section of the NIAID Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, died suddenly on January 27 at age 54. He had worked at NIH since 1985. Jeang’s research focused on the gene regulation of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and how human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) causes leukemia.
Meet your recently tenured colleagues: Laura Elnitski (NHGRI), Caroline Fox (NHLBI, Framingham), Gary Gibbons (NIMHD, NHLBI), Eddie Reed (NIMHD), Sharon Savage (NCI-DCEG), Jyoti Misra Sen (NIA), and Alfonso Silva (NINDS)
The U.S. government is considering new regulations for mitigating the potential for harmful misuse of new research findings. In 2012, the government issued a policy that required its funding agencies to review and establish management criteria for life-sciences “dual-use research of concern” (DURC). Now there's a proposal that would require institutions that conduct such research to assume responsibility for overseeing it themselves. The dual dilemma is how to develop procedures that will promote safety and security without discouraging investigators from pursuing potentially useful research.
NIH needs a structured basic-research-training program for physicians who have completed medical training and want to become independent investigators engaged in basic research. Read what Dr. Bolanle Famakin, a stroke neurologist and former NIH clinical fellow, has to say.
Led by NEI Deputy Scientific Director Sarah Sohraby, the NEI intramural training program is helping research fellows balance work-life issues and become more competitive in the workplace.
NICHD: EARLY STAGES IN MUSCLE FORMATION AND REGENERATION DISCOVERED
NICHD scientists have identified proteins that allow muscle cells in mice to form from the fusion of the early-stage cells that give rise to the muscle cells. The findings have implications for understanding how to repair and rehabilitate muscle tissue and for understanding other processes involving cell fusion, such as when a sperm fertilizes an egg, when viruses infect cells, or when specialized cells dissolve and assimilate bone tissue in order to repair and maintain bones.
