NIH gives universities about $100M to form network to speed scientific findings on health care

(AP) The government gave a dozen top universities about $100 million Tuesday to set up a network to speed scientific discoveries into better health care _ and try to transform how medical research is done.

The idea: As medicine becomes increasingly specialized, it is harder than ever for scientists from different fields to share the information needed to turn laboratory discoveries into new treatments, and then get those advances into private doctors' offices. And for universities, scientific research can be as competitive as sports.

So the National Institutes of Health created a national consortium of universities that are supposed to cooperate instead, and remove barriers to turning medical research into health care reality.

Tuesday's announcement was the down payment. By 2012, the NIH plans to have 60 academic health centers on board, and hopes to provide them with a total of $500 million a year.

NIH Director Elias Zerhouni called the network crucial in an era of burgeoning technology, including almost daily discoveries of the genetic underpinnings of disease.

"We need to accelerate the way we ... bring all these discoveries from the bench to the bedside and make sure they reach the people," he said Tuesday.

How can universities cooperating speed research?

Zerhouni noted that it took a 10-year study to overturn the dogma that hormone therapy after menopause was good for women's overall health, when in fact the drugs increase women's risk of breast cancer, strokes and heart attacks. With the new research network, large university hospitals can pool their patients to spot medication side effects _ or fill studies of rare diseases or new drugs _ far faster than today.

For example, under the new NIH project the University of Pittsburgh aims to create a pool of potential volunteers for such studies by asking virtually everyone who sees a doctor at any of Pitt's 19 affiliated hospitals of 350 outpatient offices to join a registry. Physicians then can check medical records at a glance to find qualified study candidates.

The project will require an overhaul for universities steeped in the tradition of a lone scientist plugging away in a laboratory, said Dr. David Kessler, dean of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, part of the network.

"We're talking about creating a new breed of scientist," said Kessler, who as former head of the Food and Drug Administration knows the regulatory hurdles to creating new therapies. "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."

The focus isn't just on developing new treatments. Duke University's Dr. Robert Califf said the NIH network will fund much needed research to learn why doctors and patients don't follow proven strategies _ such as why the drugs proven to best control blood pressure and cholesterol are vastly underused.

The first 12 network participants will be funded for five years, for a total of about $700 million.

Other participants: Columbia University; Rockefeller University; Mayo Clinic College of Medicine; Oregon Health & Science University; University of California, Davis; University of Pennsylvania; University of Rochester; University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; Yale University.

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On the Net:

NIH project info: http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/osptemp/ncrrprog/roadmap/CTSA_9-2006X.asp