Word: nih
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...robots to target cancer cells. Cracking the genomic code is leading to new drugs, geared to individual dna, that disrupt the very mechanism of cancer. "The rate of discovery has been phenomenal," says Dr. Harold Varmus, CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City, a former NIH director and a Nobel-winning researcher in lung cancer. "We feel we understand some of the basic principles. We understand the tissue environment...
...also mean that "lesser" cancers don't get as much attention. M.D. Anderson has a project to map the entire bladder-cancer genome. "It's not something that NIH is interested in because it's a little less common than other cancers," says DuBois. Using other funds, researchers identified a gene defect that correlates smoking and bladder cancer. "If you have that defect and you smoke, there's a 100% chance you'll get cancer," says DuBois. But the hospital is more likely to get support for work on lung cancer, a much bigger problem. So call it research triage...
...tempered by the fact that money is tighter. Funding for the NCI has been flat during the past three years of the Bush Administration, at about $4.8 billion. "One of the things that happens when money gets tight is that everything gets more conservative," says Dr. Curtis Harris, an NIH cancer researcher...
What's more, the lean times come in a period when the cost of research has outpaced inflation, so there's a double hit. The NIH has a "pay line" of roughly 14%, meaning it hands out only that percentage of the total money requested. Just 1 in 10 grant proposals it considers "meritorious"--that is, worthy of funding--gets a payout...
...different too. In fragile X, the key gene is silent; in FXTAS patients, it's too active. "The gene produces up to 10 times more message than normal," explains molecular biologist Paul Hagerman of the University of California at Davis, who together with wife Randi has received an NIH grant to study the disorder. Over time, messenger RNA--the substance that transcribes genes into proteins--accumulates in the nuclei of brain cells, eventually poisoning them...