NEWS OF THE WEEK GOVERNMENT
ROAD MAP CHARTS NIH COURSE Director outlines initiatives to shape agency's future medical research
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N SEPT. 3 0 , NATIONAL IN-
stitutes of Health Director Elias A. Zerhouni unveiled a collection of NIH-wide initiatives designed to transform the way research is done at the agency Thefive-yearplan—known as the N I H Roadmap for Medical Research—stresses interdisciplinary projects. "The singular goal of all of these
R&D
STRATEGY
3M Reorganizes Corporate Research Workforce
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n a bid to drive new product development, 3M has disbanded 12 corporate technology centers built up over the past two decades and moved 400 scientists into research units connected to its 40 business units. At the same time, 3M has funneled the remaining 500 of the 900 scientists who worked in the technology centers into one corporate research laboratory, where they will focus on advanced materials, processes, and systems. The changes will have no effect on staffing levels; the firm has 6,500 technical employees worldwide. Nor will the changes affect 3M's more than $1 billion annual R&D budget. But 3M is just one of many research-oriented firms, including DuPont and Dow Chemical, to shift focus away from seminal research and toward nearer term development work. CEO W. James McNerney Jr. claims the change is a "natural and essential step" that will bring "more of 3M's R&D resources to the front line." Senior Vice President Jay V. Ihlenfeld, who took charge of the firm's R&D operation about a year ago, explains that "we're transferring technology to the businesses—where it's needed most—by transferring people. Now technical people can play more of a role in transforming pipeline projects into marketplace realities." Historically, 3M allocated research dollars to the 40 business units at a fixed percentage of sales. The firm is now picking research targets in undeveloped areas with high payback potential, such as pharmaceuticals and optical films. 3M had more of a "shotgun" approach before, Ihlenfeld says. The new approach "is more of a rifle shot."~MARC REISCH
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initiatives is to synergize research across all of the institutes and centers ofN I H and to identify points of pressure that we need to supply to make advances across all fronts," Zerhouni told the audience. 'The key thing here is that all of these initiatives are integrated to accelerate our knowledge and translate that knowledge into effective prevention and treatment strategies." The N I H road map is organized around three broad themes: new pathways to discovery which contains 12 initiatives, including several to create molecular libraries; research teams of the future, which includes nine initiatives focused on high-risk research, interdisciplinary research, and public-private partnerships; and reengineering the clinical research enterprise, which includes seven initiatives to facilitate clinical studies. N I H has budgeted $130 million in fiscal 2004 to support the road map and expects to spend more than $2.1 billion over the program's five-year lifetime. The money will come from a common pool of resources supplied by each of the agency's 27 institutes and centers. The road map will be administered centrally, with individual institutes and centers taking the lead on initiatives as appropriate, Zerhouni explained. "It's truly not business as usual for medical research," Zerhouni said. For example, the road map includes an initiative to fund highrisk (and potentially high-payoff)
research, known as the Director's Innovator Award. This award signals an effort to break from NIH's tendency to fund traditional, lowrisk research. Zerhouni said that he plans to award 10 ofthese grants in 2004, each worth $500,000 per year. "We are pleased to see the emphasis on interdisciplinary research, new pathways to discovery, and clinical research," says Robert D. Wells, president of the Federation ofAmerican Societies
for Experimental Biology "The challenge will be to ensure that the projected growth of the new programs does not constrain the many very successful programs that N I H currently has in place." The road map is also receiving congressional support. At a joint congressional hearing held late last week on N I H oversight, members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health and the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee agreed that Zerhouni has outlined important changes to improve the agency The road map is the result of more than a year of planning at N I H , initiated by Zerhouni soon after he joined the agency in May 2 0 0 2 . More than 3 0 0 leaders from academia, the government, and the private sector contributed. Details about the road map, including grant and funding opportunities, are available online at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov.— SUSAN M0RRISSEY
HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
