NIH gives $100M to speed research-to-care process

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced this week that it has given a dozen academic medical centers a total of $100 million in an initiative intended to help these institutions move discoveries quickly from the lab to the bedside. The twelve universities receiving the grants are now part of a consortium; members are expected to help scientists work together, rather than compete aggressively for dollars, intellectual leadership and prestige as is more the norm in research circles. "We're talking about creating a new breed of scientist," Dr. David Kessler, dean of medicine at the consortium University of California, San Francisco and former head of the FDA, told the Associated Press. "Right now there are not enough people who are pursuing research that connects the dots between what is done in our basic science labs and what can directly benefit patients." By 2012, NIH expects to provide $500 million per year to 60 academic medical centers.

Find out more about NIH's plans:
- read this Associated Press report
- check out the NIH press release