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NIH Announces New Common Fund Programs
On February 25, 2010, Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, announced the approval of seven new scientific programs, which will be supported through the NIH Common Fund. The Fund encourages collaborative research programs across the NIH institutes and centers to accomplish work that one center or institute cannot accomplish alone. The new seven programs include the following:
- Library of Integrate Network-based Cellular Signatures Program—Called LINCS, the program will build a community resource of scientific information to enhance understanding as to how components of biological systems function normally to maintain health and how components become disrupted by genetic and environmental stressors to cause disease.
- Protein Capture Reagents Program—Created for new research tools, the program will produce a suite of high quality, affordable, and reliable new research tools to isolate or capture proteins in order to study their function under normal conditions and when the cell is stressed or diseased.
- Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Program—designed to decipher how genes control certain characteristics, the program will establish a system to characterize thousands of mice that have been engineered to have specific genes turned off or knocked out. The program will also decipher how specific genes control certain characteristics such as metabolism, energy balance and physical appearance in mice.
- Science of Behavior Change Program—designed to examine how human biology, culture and society influence the individual’s ability to adopt healthy behaviors, the program will address effective motivation strategies that might be developed to curb unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, excessive alcohol drinking, poor diet and lack of exercise.
- NIH Induced Pluripotent tem Cell Center—Created under the NIH Intramural Research Program, the program creates a national iPS Cell Center, which will drive the translation of scientific knowledge about stem cell biology into new cell-based treatments.
- Global Health Program—Designed to increase the capacity for global health research, the program will enhance education, training and research opportunities in developing countries.
- Regulatory Science Program—Designed to encourage rapid new knowledge, the program will ensure the development of safe and effective products based on the highest quality science in the U.S.
Additional information about these programs is available at the NIH Web site.
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