Features

The Festival that Almost Wasn’t

REPORT FROM THE 2013 RESEARCH FESTIVAL

BY LESLEY EARL, NCI

Neither snow, nor rain, nor the gloom of a government shutdown could keep NIH’s Research Festival from happening. It was just postponed a little.

This year’s festival celebrated two 60th anniversaries: that of James Watson and Francis Crick’s landmark paper that first described the DNA double-helix structure, published in Nature on April 25, 1953; and of the NIH Clinical Center, which was dedicated on July 2, 1953, and admitted its first patients four days later on July 6. In fact, the whole Research Festival took place in the Clinical Center—Masur Auditorium and in the newly opened Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) Academic Center—instead of the Natcher Building (Building 45), where it’s been held for years.

Research Festival: Selected Symposia

Highlights

Couldn’t get to all the symposia sessions at the Research Festival or you want a refresher on what you heard and saw? Here’s a sampling of what went on: “Sugar, Sugar” (about glycobiology research); “Pain, Pain, Pain”; “Aging Molecularly”; “Neurogenetic Analysis”; “T Cells Through Old Age”; “Using RNAi to Discover Genes”; “Tricking Viruses into Treating Disease”; “Optogenetic Manipulation of Neural Circuits and Behavior”; “Seriously Studying Stem Cells”; “Breast Is Best: Infant Dietary Guidelines”; and “Natural Born (Cancer) Killers.”

Precision Medicine: Louis Staudt, NCI

Using Genomics to Get Patients the Right Treatment

BY CHRIS PALMER, NCI

More than a decade and about $3 billion were sunk into sequencing the first human genome. Now, that feat can be accomplished in as little as five days and runs about $4,000. This reduction in the time and cost of genomic sequencing is the foundation of personalized medicine in which genetic analysis may point to the most effective treatment strategy.

Crowdsourcing

Accelerates the Pace of Toxicity Testing

BY JENNIFER SARGENT, NIAMS

Scientists at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) have turned to crowdsourcing as a way to help analyze massive datasets and develop new models to predict the toxicity of pharmacological and environmental chemicals. Crowdsourcing involves using collective intelligence to answer a problem. And what better way to get a scientific crowd together to tackle a problem than to issue a challenge?

Bill Gates Asks NIH Scientists for Help in Saving Lives

And Explains Why the Future Depends on Biomedical Innovation

BY REBECCA G. BAKER, NIAID

Global-health philanthropist Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, visited NIH’s Bethesda campus on December 2, 2013, to tour research labs, meet with institute directors, and deliver the David E. Barmes Global Health Lecture.

OBITUARIES 2013

Former NIH scientists and others who died in the past year.