Annex A
July 2, 2004
Professor Colin Blakemore, FRS
Chief Executive
Medical Research Council
20 Park Crescent
London W1B 1AL
UNITED KINGDOM
Dear Professor Blakemore:
Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments
in support of the strategic review of the National Institute for
Medical Research (NIMR). As you know, the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) has engaged in numerous collaborative projects
with this historic institution of the Medical Research Council
(MRC) and has valued highly these interactions. I circulated the
consultation documents you provided among my NIH colleagues, and
there is broad concurrence with the recommendations of the Task
Force-especially with the conclusion that continuation of the
NIMR is in the best interest of the MRC as well as the international
community.
We wholly support recommendations that the mission
of the renewed Institute incorporate basic science and translational
research, as well as clinical research, and that it be envisioned
as the premier central UK resource for future training in the
biological and medical sciences, biotechnology, and bioinformatics.
We defer to the UK medical and scientific communities regarding
the most appropriate location for this renewed NIMR. Certainly,
as the Task Force proposed, we appreciate that a location in central
London, close to academic and clinical centers of excellence,
would offer distinct logistic advantages for the future development
of integrated business and strategic plans for the reconfigured
NIMR; but we recognise the cost implications of relocation.
With regard to the three alternative organizational
models being considered by the Task Force, we too prefer Model
2-a single site in partnership with a research university and
associated hospital. If the NIMR does expand to incorporate areas
of clinical investigation, we believe that this enterprise should
build on areas of current scientific strength in the basic sciences
among NIMR research groups.
Attached are additional comments that provide
texture to these general comments that I hope are useful. Thank
you again for soliciting our views as you move forward.
With best personal regards,
Sincerely,
/s/
Elias A Zerhouni, MD
Director
Enclosure (follows)
Similar to the MRC, the NIH possesses the dual
mandate of supporting an extramural research enterprise—consisting
of support to academic and not-for-profit research centers—and
an intramural program housed largely on its central campus. The
NIH periodically has reviewed the mission and focus of its intramural
research program and has addressed questions similar to those
faced in reviewing the prospective directions for the MRC Mill
Hill site. In its planning efforts, the agency has tried to take
full advantage of those attributes within the intramural program
which set it apart from the extramural program and believe these
considerations may be germane to your discussion.
First, the NIH intramural program includes relatively
long-term and stable funding. Among other advantages, this provides
potentials to pursue highly exploratory or high-risk studies often
undervalued in the extramural peer review process. Second, the
availability of on-site patient investigational facilities promotes
cooperation among laboratory-based and physician scientists; their
co-location both has accelerated the movement of scientific discoveries
from bench to bedside and engaged biotechnology firms in multiple
research protocols. Third, the intramural program has provided
an environment where scientists can be mobilized at short notice
to respond to urgent scientific challenges, such as an effective
vaccine against HIV or investigations of drug resistant pathogens.
This has enabled NIH to adapt rapidly to emerging needs.
These attributes are key considerations in identifying
research priorities, which are shaped both by the knowledge and
skills of the intramural scientific community and its unique capacity
to aggregate multidisciplinary research resources. Moreover, and
most importantly, the intramural program has provided a central
national locus where scientists from various academic centers
work in concert, reaping the benefits of cross-fertilization.
One of the most productive aspects of the program has been to
attract clinically trained scientists to work with resident scientists
expert in a variety of both basic and translational biomedical
disciplines. These programs not only have recruited many young
physicians into a research career, but often have redirected and
reinvigorated the work of physician scientists from academic research
centers.
The NIH recognizes that the review of the NIMR
is taking place in the broader context of MRC's Forward Investment
Strategy, which examines strategic directions in biomedical science
in the context of future capital investment. Over the past two
years, the NIH and its community of stakeholders have been engaged
in a consultative process, commonly known as the Roadmap for Biomedical
Research, to define a select set of scientific and infrastructual
priorities essential to accelerate progress in biomedicine. The
core premise of the initiative is that the biomedical sciences
are converging on a set of unifying principles that link disparate
diseases through common biological pathways and therapeutic approaches.
The NIH's challenge is to promote an enabling environment to support
the pace and direction of discovery and application.
Given the NIMR's four current areas of research
emphases, your discussions regarding the potential of incorporating
clinically-oriented programs, and the NIMR's role as an enabling
complement to the MRC research supported within British universities,
several of the Roadmap priorities may be relevant to the MRC's
discussions on the future directions of the NIMR. Detailed information
on this initiative is available at http://nihroadmap.nih.gov.
The NIH is happy to discuss any of the major areas and provide
you with information on the status of the initiatives.
The NIH hopes this information is useful in
considering the role of the NIMR within the MRC's broad scope
of investment.
NIH/FIC
6 June 2004
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