新掌门上任透露NIH五项发展大计

　　

生物通报道，NIH新掌门Collins上任首日发表重要讲话，提出日后工作的5大重点项目。

 

尽管备受争议Collins还是以新掌门的姿态和身份登上了NIH院长的宝座，哪个院长没一点争议呢，究竟Collins是否对得起民众的期盼和总统奥巴马的委任还得以观后效。

 

据Science Insider报道，上任首日，Collins向手下一众人的发表演说，提出了5个重要的工作中心。所谓新官上任三把火，这该是Collins的第一把火吧！

 

在5个工作重心中，生物大项目居首位，包括，继续提高基因组测序技术的发展，复杂传染病的遗传致病机制。第二位是：加速临床转化，尽快设计药物治疗罕见的遗传疾病。第三是：医疗改革，包括基础研究方面和临床治疗方面的项目。第四是：全球卫生计划。第五是：加强生物医药研究人员间的交流，持续地给资金资助研究项目，鼓励青年研究员，资助创新研究项目。

 

此外，Collins还将继续处理NIH的100亿美金的研究资金，确保资助项目最终有成果出来。Collins希望能说服国会给予生命科学领域更多的经济支持以促进经济发展和生命科学的发展。

 

最后，Collins对NIH做了一些人事上的安排。

（生物通 小茜）

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Collins said that "job one" is dealing with what happens when the $10.4 billion that NIH received as part of this year's stimulus package runs out in 2011. NIH faces "a perfect storm," he said, partly driven by a flood of more than 20,000 applications for stimulus-funded grants, that could bring record-low success rates if the agency’s budget doesn’t rise above the current $30.6 billion. He will argue for more funding by telling Congress that NIH funding stimulates local economies and by emphasizing "themes that clearly resonate." He noted that $40 billion, which some groups are pushing for, is "within [the] envelope" of what NIH would need to restore losses to inflation since 2003. 

Collins also addressed concerns that he said have "graced many pages of the blogosphere," as well as the op-ed page of The New York Times, that his evangelical Christian beliefs could influence how he runs NIH. He said he has resigned from BioLogos, the foundation exploring science and faith that he started. He told reporters that those "personal interests … will not interfere with the judgments that I will need to make as the director of the NIH."

As for management issues, Collins has chosen to retain Raynard Kington as his principal deputy director. Kington served in that position until becoming acting NIH director after Elias Zerhouni resigned last fall. Collins expects to hold off on finding a permanent director for the alcoholism institute because of an ongoing discussion about whether it should merge with NIH's drug addiction institute. Asked about NIH's intramural program, he is "resistant to the idea that [the program] is in need of some sort of dramatic redo" but is pondering whether to create a pool of intramural money that, like NIH's Common Fund, could be used to fund crosscutting research quickly.