September–October 2015 | NIH Intramural Research Program

Precision Psychiatry

Imagine you arrived at a hospital emergency room before the advent of modern medicine with intense abdominal pain. You could have had a stomach virus, kidney stones, appendicitis, or something worse. But because the doctors lacked the proper diagnostic tools and knowledge to identify your illness, the only thing they could do was treat your most prominent symptom—your pain. For many with mental-health problems this scenario is still close to reality.

Creating Devices for the Clinic

Deciding Which Seeds Are Worth Watering

BY LESLEY EARL, NCI

For every great idea–for every great solution to a problem–there are a thousand ideas that fall by the wayside, discarded along the path that begins at the first flash of insight and ends in a working solution. Translational medicine often follows this twisty path, especially in the realm of developing new medical devices.

From the Deputy Director for Intramural Research

Data Sharing: Greater Than the Sum of All Parts

BY MICHAEL GOTTESMAN, DDIR

Aristotle’s saying “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is as true today as it was in the mid-300s B.C.E., especially when it comes to sharing genomic and other kinds of biomedical data.

Alumni News

Looking Past the Glitz

Theodore Friedmann: The Father of Gene Therapy

BY LAURA STEPHENSON CARTER

NIH alum Theodore Friedmann may be too modest to brag about his pioneering role in gene-therapy research, but the Japan Prize Foundation sure wasn’t when it bestowed its prestigious prize on him and two other scientists earlier this year.

Recognition of Brilliant Scientific Work

NIH’s Two New National Academy of Sciences Members

BY SOMA CHOWDHURY, OD

Alan Hinnebusch (NICHD) and Warren Leonard (NHLBI) were recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Colleagues: Recently Tenured

Meet your recently tenured colleagues: Edward Giniger (NINDS); Hormuzd Katki (NCI_DCEG); Hisataka Kobayashi (NCI-CCR): Keir Neuman (NHLBI, pictured); and Charles Venditti (NHGRI).

News Briefs

V.I.P.s from China met with U.S. health officials at NIH recently; new directors have been appointed to head two institutes; and a Congressman visited NIDA labs.

Research Briefs

Research highlights: advances in diagnosing coronary heart disease; high-resolution 3D images reveal the muscle mitochondrial power grid; trash-collecting cells go awry and accelerate damage in a blinding eye disease; placenta-on-a-chip lets researchers study the inner workings of the human placenta; body-weight planner is a new resource for achieving healthy weight; a protein plays a significant role in fertilization.

NIEHS Scientists Are Not Convinced

BY KELLY LENOX, NIEHS

A study published in the January 2, 2015, issue of Science that suggests that cancer is mainly bad luck spurred National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences biostatisticians to take a closer look at how the data were interpreted.

Three-Minute Talks

A Short and Sweet Way to Communicate Science

BY SOMA CHOWDHURY, OD

Who doesn’t want to brag about their research? But how quickly can you do it?

Photographic Moment

A happy honey bee found its way to NIH.

Photographic Moment (Web Exclusive)

BACK TO SCHOOL?

While waiting for the shuttle bus inside the NIH gate, one Friday morning in August, Francisco Sy took this photo with his iPhone. Sy is the director of the Office of Community-Based Participatory Research and Collaboration, in the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Hope, Science, and Miracles

The NIH Children’s Inn Celebrates 25 Years

BY JACQUELINE ROBERTS, OD

“Those of us who come here, our heart in our hand[s], [hope] for a miracle.”

The Training Page

FROM THE FELLOWS

Curiosity of Curiologie

BY APRIL KILLIKELLY, NIAID VRC

Two seventh-grade girls were intently watching three nightcrawlers (earthworms) positioned on a table between wet and dry paper towels. Which direction would they go, the girls wondered. Meanwhile, a previously sassy and nonchalant classmate peered over their shoulders and squealed, “O M G [oh my God], it moved!”

Announcements

Check out what’s happening at NIH.

NEWS FROM AND ABOUT THE SCIENTIFIC INTEREST GROUPS

Check out the new SIGS: Developmental Biology; Trans-NIH Biomarkers in Pediatric Therapeutics; Pulmonary Vascular Diseases; and Single-Cell Genomics

This page was last updated on Monday, April 25, 2022