NIH Director Francis Collins Answers a Few Questions. (October 12, 2009)

Following a visit to the US National Institutes of Health's Headquarters by president Barack Obama, its director of six weeks, Francis Collins, took time out to answer some questions put to him by Science's Jocelyn Kaiser.

Some excerpts:

Q: The Challenge Grants* created a lot of work, and only 3% to 4% were funded. If you could go back and do it over again, would you rethink the Challenge Grant competition?

F.C.: I wasn't here then, but I don't hear that from others. I would say this is a great problem to have. What it showed was this pent-up demand that had been building over 5 years of flat budgets.

Q: A recent report found that NIH is now awarding 19% of R01 grants to proposals that missed the "payline," or quality cutoff, largely to help new investigators. Is 19% too high?

F.C.: Isn't this an interesting discussion because certainly in the past the concern has been that NIH is not doing enough for new investigators. Now people are raising the issue: "Are we doing too much of this?" I don't think so. We're basically trying to give new investigators who already have a superb priority score but just missed the cut a chance to get started.

Q: What do you think of President Obama's proposal to double cancer research over 8 years?

F.C.: Obviously, the president has a particular interest in cancer because of experiences in his own family. Certainly, we would all agree that increasing the funding for cancer would be highly justified. At the same time, many people worry about a circumstance where one disease is picked out of the pile and made to sound like it is more important. And certainly from NIH's perspective, I think we would like to see the rising tide lift all the boats.

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* NIH designated at least US$200 million for a new initiative called the NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research. The program will support research in areas which the NIH believes address specific challenges in biomedical and behavioural research that would benefit from significant 2-year jumpstart funds. For additional information click here.