Charting a new course
The NIH is changing the way medical research is funded ... and the University is taking action.
Jasjit S. Ahluwalia, M.D., is reviewing documents in the Academic Health Center's Office of Clinical Research when one of his assistants places three Dole 6-oz. fruit snacks on the conference table beside him.
When he sees the containers of cubed fruit floating in syrup, his face lights up, and he proceeds to remove the plastic seal on each tub and consume its contents.
Jasjit Ahluwalia, M.D., heads the new Office of Clinical Research, which is guiding the Academic Health Center in its goals to improve and expand its basic and clinical research initiatives.
"Those are good!" he exclaims when he's finished. "They're not too sweet, and they keep me going."
Even though Ahluwalia has plenty of energy, he can still use the boost. Hired only last September to head the new Office of Clinical Research — created in response to the AHC's Clinical Research Task Force report issued two years earlier — he had barely arrived at the University and begun assembling a staff when a bombshell erupted in the pages of the New England Journal of Medicine.
In the October 13, 2005, issue of that venerable journal, Elias Zerhouni, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced a new program that is likely to change the way medical research is funded in this country. It's called the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA).
This fall, the NIH will grant seven of these awards to help institutions forge new approaches to clinical and translational research — the kind that move medical breakthroughs from the lab to the doctor's office. These new approaches include training, community-based research, and the creation of centers like the University's Office of Clinical Research.
In addition, $11.5 million will be allocated for planning grants to help institutions not yet ready to make full applications. By 2012 the NIH will award up to 60 active CTSAs with a total value of about $500 million per year.
When the University decided to apply for one of the new grants, it fell to Ahluwalia to coordinate the effort. Unfortunately, the deadline — including extensive documentation of current levels of research infrastructure and spending — allowed just five months to prepare. Fortunately, according to Ahluwalia, the Academic Health Center (AHC) already had a leg up.
One student's view
Heather Nelson is a very busy young woman.
The second-year medical student serves on the Academic Health Center's steering committee for the Transforming the U strategic positioning project, whose goal is to make the University of Minnesota one of the world's top three public research universities within a decade.