National Institutes Of Health RePORTER Research Articles

Federal and foundational research funding trends for cerebrovascular neurosurgeons: the decline of the cerebrovascular surgeon-scientist?

The number of cerebrovascular (CV) surgeons has grown with the rise of endovascular neurosurgery. However, it is unclear whether the number of CV surgeon-scientists has concomitantly increased. With increasing numbers of CV neurosurgeons in the US workforce, the authors analyzed associated changes in National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation (NREF) funding trends for CV surgeons over time. Publicly available data were collected on currently practicing academic CV surgeons in the US. Inflation-adjusted NIH funding between 2009 and 2021 was surveyed using NIH RePORTER and Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research data. The K12 Neurosurgeon Research Career Development Program and NREF grant data were queried for CV-focused grants. Pearson R correlation, chi-square analysis, and the Mann-Whitney U-test were used for statistical analysis. From 2009 to 2021, NIH funding increased: in total (p = 0.0318), to neurosurgeons (p < 0.0001), to CV research projects (p < 0.0001), and to CV surgeons (p = 0.0018). During this time period, there has been an increase in the total number of CV surgeons (p < 0.0001), the number of NIH-funded CV surgeons (p = 0.0034), and the percentage of CV surgeons with NIH funding (p = 0.370). Additionally, active NIH grant dollars per CV surgeon (p = 0.0398) and the number of NIH grants per CV surgeon (p = 0.4257) have increased. Nevertheless, CV surgeons have been awarded a decreasing proportion of the overall pool of neurosurgeon-awarded NIH grants during this time period (p = 0.3095). In addition, there has been a significant decrease in the number of K08, K12, and K23 career development awards granted to CV surgeons during this time period (p = 0.0024). There was also a significant decline in the proportion of K12 (p = 0.0044) and downtrend in early-career NREF (p = 0.8978) grant applications and grants awarded during this time period. Finally, NIH-funded CV surgeons were more likely to have completed residency less recently (p = 0.001) and less likely to have completed an endovascular fellowship (p = 0.044) as compared with non-NIH-funded CV surgeons. The number of CV surgeons is increasing over time. While there has been a concomitant increase in the number of NIH-funded CV surgeons and the number of NIH grants awarded per CV surgeon in the past 12 years, there has also been a significant decrease in CV surgeons with K08, K12, and K23 career development awards and a downtrend in CV-focused K12 and early-career NREF applications and awarded grants. The latter findings suggest that the pipeline for future NIH-funded CV surgeons may be in decline.

The State of National Institute of Health Awards for funding genetic counseling research, resources, and training over the past decade.

Research related to the practice of genetic counseling has historically been accomplished through student projects, small private grants, or as a part of a larger research study. Yet, recent initiatives supported by the National Society of Genetic Counselors and the National Human Genome Research Institute have recognized and promoted the need for additional genetic counseling research funding and training. In this study, we aimed to characterize awards from the United States' National Institutes of Health (NIH) over the past 10 years that support research related to genetic counseling. Asearch of the NIH RePORTER database conducted on April 25, 2022, using terms broadly related to genetic counseling, identified 3993 awards from fiscal years 2011 to 2022. After deduplication, 1231 grants were reviewed for screening. The final dataset included 43 awards of various types with the majority being research or R series grants [R01 (n = 17), R21 (n = 7)]. The remaining awards were Cooperative Agreements (U01, n = 6), intramural (Z-grants, n = 5), Center Core (P30, n = 2), Specialized Center (P50, n = 1), Career Development Award (K01, n = 1), Other Transactions (OT2, n = 1), Resource Program (G13, n = 1), and Research Training and Fellowship (T32, n = 1). Most grants were awarded between 2019 and 2022 (n = 24, 55.8%). The majority of awards were categorized as studies that included a comparison of different genetic counseling models (n = 23), outcomes of implementing genetic counseling (n = 11), core resources for genetic counselors (n = 5), and genetic counseling training programs (n = 4). Thirteen of the awards (30.2%) had a specific aim/goal/focus on underserved or underrepresented populations. The topics were predominantly related to cancer (n = 26). Nine awards were led or co-led by a genetic counselor (20.9%). Despite significant growth in genetic counseling research support from US-based funders over the past 3 years, major gaps related to funding exist, including that most award recipients are not genetic counselors.

A 10 Year Analysis of Gender Distribution in National Institutes of Health Funding for Non-Malignant Hematology

Introduction: Historically, there has been an underrepresentation of women in the field of hematology. Consequently, this makes them less likely to receive academic research grants. Here, we present a ten year retrospective analysis of the Research Project Grants (R01) awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the fiscal years of 2012-2022. The grants were categorized by various NIH agencies. This temporal analysis examines gender disparities under the field of non-malignant hematology research. Methods:Data was extracted for the fiscal years 2012-2022 focusing exclusively on R01 grants awarded and categorized by the various NIH agencies. Data was leveraged using the NIH RePORTER tool, Tidyverse, and janitor packages in R. The dataset incorporated key grant parameters such as grant ID, agency code, activity code, abstract text, project title, fiscal year, activity status, award amount, organization, and principal investigator's(PI) name. In order to distinguish a PI's gender, PI's first names were processed using the gender package in R, which provided a gender-wise distribution of recipients. For statistical analyses, proportions of females with accepted R01 grants were compared between 2012 to 2022; this proportion analysis was also done among each NIH agency. Further, linear regression and associated statistical tests were used to identify whether there was significant change in grants received by either gender over this time period. Results: A total of 250,031 R01 grants were awarded by the NIH during the fiscal years of 2012 to 2022. Females (n=82,152: 32.9% (95% CI 0.41-0.43) received fewer grants than males (n=167,879: 67.1%, (95% CI 0.50-0.55). Across 2012 to 2022, there was no significant change in R01 grants awarded among men (16,221 to 15,601, p-value= 0.52). In contrast, there was a significant difference for females in the R01 grants awarded across 2012 to 2022 (6,865 to 9,339, p-value &amp;lt;0.001). In 2012, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) awarded less than 25% of the total grants to females. By 2022, of all the agencies, the NBIB remained the agency with the most extensive gender gap with females being awarded only 23% of grants. In contrast, the National Institute of Minority Health and Disparities (NIMHD) and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) were the only agencies in 2012 to award more grants to females with approximately 52% and 74% of grants respectively. In 2022, the NINR and NIHMD continued to show more grants awarded to females versus males. In addition to those agencies, by 2022, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development(NICHD) and National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) joined the NINR and NIHMD in awarding more than 50% of grants awarded to females that year. Conclusion: This analysis highlights continued gender disparity as only 33% of total R01 NIH grants were awarded to females during the fiscal years 2012-2022 in non-malignant hematologic research. Although, it is noted that while some agencies have made strides towards gender parity, others continue to have a significant gap. While this remains a systemic and multifaceted issue, identifying these areas of gender disparity will enable targeted efforts to bridge this gap and advance gender equality.

National Institutes of Health Funding Gaps for Principal Investigators

Early-stage and established investigators compete for a limited supply of funds from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Regardless of their previous funding success, many principal investigators (PIs) encounter a funding gap in which they no longer receive ongoing funding from the NIH. To determine incidence rates of PI-level funding gaps, the mean funding gap length, and whether these 2 metrics are associated with previous funding success. This study was conducted using data from NIH RePORTER. Historical datafiles for fiscal year (FY) 2011 to FY 2021 were aggregated to generate 2 master datafiles for this period: all NIH awards and only R01 awards. PIs with no funding in FY 2011 or FY 2021 were removed. PIs were sorted by FY 2011 total funding amounts and grouped by quarter of amount. A total of 39 944 unique researchers were awarded 220 131 NIH awards, of which 103 753 were R01 awards. For all NIH awards, there was an overall linear increase from top quarter to bottom quarter in the percentage of PIs who had at least 1 year without funding (from 27% to 75%), percentage of these gap PIs who had at least 2 consecutive years without funding (from 56% to 68%), and mean maximum consecutive years without funding for gap PIs (2.2 years to 3.1 years). For only R01 awards, there was an overall linear increase from top quarter to bottom quarter in the percentage of PIs who had at least 1 year without funding (50% to 74%), percentage of gap PIs who had at least 2 consecutive years without funding (59% to 71%), and mean maximum consecutive years without funding for gap PIs (2.4 years to 3.1 years). In this cohort study of NIH-funded investigators, PIs with higher NIH funding were less likely to experience a funding gap. Additionally, when these PIs encountered a funding gap, this period without funding was shorter; however, among all PIs, funding gaps typically lasted 2 to 3 years. These associations were found inclusive of all NIH awards and when analysis was limited to only R01 awards. These findings may be useful to PIs and academic institutions as they prepare, structure, and project research resource allocations.

The Anesthesiology Physician-Scientist Pipeline: Current Status and Recommendations for Future Growth-An Initiative of the Anesthesia Research Council.

The limited number and diversity of resident physicians pursuing careers as physician-scientists in medicine has been a concern for many decades. The Anesthesia Research Council aimed to address the status of the anesthesiology physician-scientist pipeline, benchmarked against other medical specialties, and to develop strategic recommendations to sustain and expand the number and diversity of anesthesiology physician-scientists. The working group analyzed data from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the National Resident Matching Program to characterize the diversity and number of research-oriented residents from US and international allopathic medical schools entering 11 medical specialties from 2009 to 2019. Two surveys were developed to assess the research culture of anesthesiology departments. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding information awarded to anesthesiology physician-scientists and departments was collected from NIH RePORTER and the Blue Ridge Medical Institute. Anesthesiology ranked eighth to tenth place of 11 medical specialties in the percent of "research-oriented" entering residents, defined as those with advanced degrees (Master's or PhDs) in addition to the MD degree or having published at least 3 research publications before residency. Anesthesiology ranked eighth of 11 specialties in the percent of entering residents who were women but ranked fourth of 11 specialties in the percent of entering residents who self-identified as belonging to an underrepresented group in medicine. There has been a 72% increase in both the total NIH funding awarded to anesthesiology departments and the number of NIH K-series mentored training grants (eg, K08 and K23) awarded to anesthesiology physician-scientists between 2015 and 2020. Recommendations for expanding the size and diversity of the anesthesiology physician-scientist pipeline included (1) developing strategies to increase the number of research intensive anesthesiology departments; (2) unifying the diverse programs among academic anesthesiology foundations and societies that seek to grow research in the specialty; (3) adjusting American Society of Anesthesiologists metrics of success to include the number of anesthesiology physician-scientists with extramural research support; (4) increasing the number of mentored awards from Foundation of Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) and International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS); (5) supporting an organized and concerted effort to inform research-oriented medical students of the diverse research opportunities within anesthesiology should include the specialty being represented at the annual meetings of Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) students and the American Physician Scientist Association, as well as in institutional MSTP programs. The medical specialty of anesthesiology is defined by new discoveries and contributions to perioperative medicine which will only be sustained by a robust pipeline of anesthesiology physician-scientists.

Scholarly activity following National Institutes of Health Women’s Reproductive Health Research K12 training—a cohort study

National Institutes of Health funding to address basic reproductive health for common female conditions remains disproportionately low, in part because of low success rates of grant applications by obstetrician-gynecologists. This study aimed to evaluate the scholarly productivity of individuals supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Women's Reproductive Health Research K12 career development award, created to advance careers of obstetrician-gynecologist physician-scientists. We performed a cohort study of individuals who completed at least 2 years of Women's Reproductive Health Research training by June 30, 2015, and had at least 5-year follow-up. Earliest training start date was December 1, 1998. Primary outcomes from public data sources (National Institutes of Health RePORTER, PubMed, iCite) were (1) number of total and R01 National Institutes of Health grants as principal investigator; (2) numbers of total and first and last author publications; and (3) median and highest publication impact factor measured by the relative citation ratio. Secondary outcomes from an email survey subcohort were total number of research grants, federally funded grants, and number of National Institutes of Health grants as coinvestigator; institutional promotions and academic appointments, national and National Institutes of Health leadership roles; and career and mentorship satisfaction. Outcomes were recorded at 5, 10, and 15 years postgraduation, and aggregate anonymized data were divided into 3 groups using Women's Reproductive Health Research completion dates: June 30 of 2005, 2010, and 2015. Temporal trends were assessed. Results were stratified by gender, number of awarded grant cycles (1-2 vs 3-4), and specialty type. Analyses used Fisher exact or Pearson chi-square tests, and Mantel-Haenszel tests of trend. The distribution of the cohort (N=178) by graduation completion date was: on or before June 30, 2005 (57 [32%]); July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2010 (60 [34%]); and July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2015 (61 [34%]). Most participants were female (112 [64%]) and maternal-fetal medicine trained (53 [30%]), followed by no fellowship (50 [28%]). Of the 178 participants, 72 (40%) received additional National Institutes of Health funding as a principal investigator, 45 (25%) received at least 1 R01, and 23 (13%) received 2 to 5 R01s. There were 52 (31%) scholars with >10 first author publications, 66 (39%) with >10 last author publications, and 108 (63%) with ≥25 publications. The highest relative citation ratio was a median of 8.07 (interquartile range, 4.20-15.16). There were 121 (71%) scholars with relative citation ratio ≥5, indicating >5-fold greater publication impact than that of other National Institutes of Health-funded scientists in similar areas of research. No differences by gender, institution, or temporal trends were observed. Of the full cohort, 69 (45.7%) responded to the survey; most self-identified as women (50 [73%]) and White (51 [74%]). Our findings suggest that the infrastructure provided by an institutional K award is an advantageous career development award mechanism for obstetrician-gynecologists, a group of predominantly women surgeons. It may serve as a corrective for the known inequities in National Institutes of Health funding by gender.

Community-Based Participatory Research: Insights, Challenges, and Successes From the Perspectives of Frontline Recruiters and Investigators

Employment of community-based participatory research (CBPR) strategies has helped address limitations of traditional research approaches, but we still do not have a full understanding of how study teams successfully conduct research with populations who experience health disparities. To gain insights into the unique successes and challenges of research teams conducting National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded community-engaged research studies, we conducted an online survey with 120 investigators identified through NIH RePORTER and 106 members of the academic study team (research staff) who assisted with recruitment. We examined descriptive statistics and used Chi-square analysis to compare responses between investigators and staff. Most studies targeted low-income, racial/ethnic minority populations and reported high recruitment and retention rates. The most common collaborators were community-based organizations, and the most common study purpose was to evaluate an intervention. There was generally consensus between investigators and staff about effective recruitment and retention strategies, barriers, and facilitators. However, there were also some critical differences, including perceptions about community partner roles and the value of staff input into study design and methods. After the presentation of our key findings, we share best practices for successful recruitment and retention in health disparities research using CBPR approaches.

Postdoctoral National Institutes of Health F32 Grants: Broken Pipeline in the Development of Surgeon-Scientists.

We examined trainees in surgery and internal medicine who received National Institutes of Health (NIH) F32 postdoctoral awards to determine their success rates in obtaining future NIH funding. Trainees participate in dedicated research years during residency (surgery) and fellowship (internal medicine). They can obtain an NIH F32 grant to fund their research time and have structured mentorship. We collected NIH F32 grants (1992-2021) for Surgery Departments and Internal Medicine Departments from NIH RePORTER, an online database of NIH grants. Nonsurgeons and noninternal medicine physicians were excluded. We collected demographic information on each recipient, including gender, current specialty, leadership positions, graduate degrees, and any future NIH grants they received. A Mann-Whitney U test was used for continuous variables, and a χ 2 test was utilized to analyze categorical variables. An alpha value of 0.05 was used to determine significance. We identified 269 surgeons and 735 internal medicine trainees who received F32 grants. A total of 48 surgeons (17.8%) and 339 internal medicine trainees (50.2%) received future NIH funding ( P < 0.0001). Similarly, 24 surgeons (8.9%) and 145 internal medicine trainees (19.7%) received an R01 in the future ( P < 0.0001). Surgeons who received F32 grants were more likely to be department chair or division chiefs ( P =0.0055 and P < 0.0001). Surgery trainees who obtain NIH F32 grants during dedicated research years are less likely to receive any form of NIH funding in the future compared with their internal medicine colleagues who received F32 grants.

(548) NIH Funding Trends for Men's and Women's Urologic Conditions

Abstract Introduction Existing literature reports a general trend of increasing National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for surgeon-scientists in America and shows that urology has not benefited from this trend. NIH funding for urologists continues to lag behind that of our peers in other surgical specialties. Between 2010-2019 urology departments received the second-lowest amount of NIH funding of all surgical specialties, only above plastic surgery. The literature also shows that NIH awards significantly less money to male cancer research (i.e., prostate cancer) than female cancer research (i.e., breast cancer). We sought to explore further gender-specific grant variation within NIH urologic funding by exploring dollars awarded to benign gender-specific non-cancer topics of urologic research. We hypothesized that an NIH funding disparity would exist between men’s health urologic research and research devoted to women’s health urologic issues. Objective To explore NIH funding trends for men's and women's urologic health conditions via the NIH Reporter database Methods We used the publicly available NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results (NIH RePORTER) to perform our data collection. NIH RePORTER is an online search tool of the repository of NIH-funded research projects and is linked to publications, patents and clinical trials resulting from NIH funding. Data was queried for a ten-year period between 2012-2021. We used uniform search parameters including “Department Type: urology” to filter for publications from departments of urology, “Funding Mechanism: research project grant” to eliminate R&amp;D, and “Award Type: new” to capture only first-time awards in our search period. All authors were included in our search, which encompassed both trainees and non-trainees independent of Activity Code. We selected four women’s urological health issues and four men’s urological health issues to guide a keyword search. Our women’s urological health issues included overactive bladder, incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse. In addition, we queried the NIH Spending Category of “Women’s Health”. Our men’s urological health issues include erectile dysfunction, Peyronie's disease, hypogonadism and male stress incontinence. Search terms related to these health conditions were used to query project title, projects terms and project abstracts in the NIH RePORTER. Results Results of our research findings are summarized in Table 1. Of the 12 projects identified that exclusively investigate either a men’s health condition or a women’s health condition, 7 focused on men’s health and 5 on women’s health. NIH spending on women’s health issues exceeded that for men's health conditions by $833,964, a 51% difference, even though fewer projects were identified related to women’s health conditions. Overall, fewer gender-exclusive projects were found than expected. For example, incontinence projects frequently included both male and female-bodied participants. Conclusions NIH appears to devote substantially less funding for investigating benign urologic men’s health issues than benign urologic women’s health issues. Further examination of this funding gap is warranted, and if confirmed it would be prudent to improve NIH urologic funding in general and men’s health research funding specifically. Disclosure Any of the authors act as a consultant, employee or shareholder of an industry for: Coloplast.

Addressing Barriers to Career Development Awards for Early Career Women in Pediatric Psychology.

To provide person and system-level recommendations for supporting early career women in the field of pediatric psychology in writing and submitting National Institutes of Health (NIH) Career Development Award (K award) applications. Recommendations are provided in the context of common barriers, with a focus on practical solutions. Publicly available NIH reporter data were compiled to examine rates of funding for Society of Pediatric Psychology (SPP) members. Barriers that women face when initiating programs of research are described and applied to the field of pediatric psychology. Of current SPP members, 3.9% (n = 50) have ever received an NIH K award. Approximately 88.5% of SPP members identify as women, including 89.0% of SPP K award recipients. A table of person- and systems-level recommendations is provided to offer strategies for mentees, mentors/sponsors, institutions, and national organizations to address the barriers discussed. By addressing gender-specific barriers to submitting K award applications, we hope to increase the number of women K awardees and support the scientific advancement of pediatric psychology.

How Well Are Pharmacists Represented in National Institutes of Health R01 Funding to United States Schools of Pharmacy?

Pharmacists are essential healthcare providers but historically are not well represented as principal investigators (PIs) of R01 grants by the United States (US) National Institutes of Health (NIH). Pharmacy organizations have taken steps to provide pharmacists with research training to improve their chances of achieving PI status. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using data from the NIH RePORTER website about R01 grants awarded to PIs affiliated with US Schools of Pharmacy (SOPs) for the fiscal years 2005-2019. Information regarding professional degrees was supplemented using data from the PIs' institutional website profiles and other internet-based sources. Only doctorate degrees obtained within the US were included for clinically related degrees. Data regarding more than one year of funding for the same project, equipment supplements, and diversity supplements were excluded to focus on unique projects in year one of funding. PhDs were the primary unique PIs of R01 grants at US SOPs (&gt;90%). Pharmacist representation as unique PIs increased over the 15 years but was still only 10.1% for the years 2015-2019. There was a higher percentage of female pharmacists as unique PIs than female non-pharmacists. Pharmacists are currently underrepresented as unique PIs for NIH R01 grants. This conclusion is limited by not knowing how many pharmacist R01 applications were submitted.

National Institutes of Health Diversity Supplement Awards by Medical School.

Increasing medical school faculty diversity is an urgent priority. National Institutes of Health (NIH) diversity supplements, which provide funding and career development opportunities to individuals underrepresented in research, are an important mechanism to increase faculty diversity. Analyze diversity supplement utilization by medical schools. Retrospective cohort study. All R01 grant-associated diversity supplements awarded to medical schools from 2005 to 2020. Diversity supplements were identified using the publicly available NIH RePORTER database. Main measures were the number of R01-associated diversity supplements awarded to medical schools each year by medical schoolNIH funding status and the number of R01-associated diversity supplements awarded to individual medical schools in the NIH top 40 by funding status. We also examined the percentage of R01 grants with an associated diversity supplement by NIH funding status and individual medical school in the NIH top 40. From 2005 to 2020, US medical school faculty received 1389 R01-associated diversity supplements. The number of diversity supplements awarded grew from 2012 to 2020, from ten to 187 for top 40 schools, and from seven to 83 for non-top 40 schools. The annual growth rate for diversity supplement awards at NIH top 40 schools (44.2%) was not significantly different than the annual growth rate among non-top 40 schools (36.2%; p = 0.68). From 2005 to 2020, the highest number of diversity supplements that an individual medical school received was 56 and the lowest number was four (mean = 24.6, SD = 11.7). The highest percentage of R01 grants with an associated diversity supplement received by a school was 4.5% and the lowest percentage was 0.79% (mean = 2.3%, SD = 0.98). Medical schools may be missing an opportunity to address the continuing shortage of individuals historically underrepresented in biomedical science and should consider additional mechanisms to enhance diversity supplement utilization.

An Update: National Institutes of Health Research Funding for Palliative Medicine 2016-2020.

Background: The evidence base to support palliative care clinical practice is inadequate and opportunities to improve the evidence base remain despite the field's rapid growth. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine current National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of palliative medicine research and trends over time. Design: We sought to identify NIH funding of palliative medicine (2016-2020) in two stages: (1) we searched the NIH grant database, RePORTER, for grants with the keywords, "palliative care," "end-of-life care," "hospice," and "end of life," and (2) identified palliative care researchers likely to have secured NIH funding using three strategies. Methods: We abstracted (1) the first and last authors' names from original investigations published in major palliative medicine journals from 2016 to 2018; (2) names from a PubMed-generated list of original articles published in major medicine, nursing, and subspecialty journals using the above keywords; and (3) palliative medicine journal editorial board members and members of key palliative medicine initiatives. We cross-matched the pooled names against NIH grants funded from 2016 to 2021. Results: A crosswalk analysis of the author search and NIH RePORTER search identified 1658 grants. Of those, 541 were categorized as relevant to palliative medicine, which represented 419 unique principal investigators (mean of 1.34 grants per investigator). Compared with 2011-2015, the number of NIH-funded grants increased by 25%, NIH dollars increased by 35%, and the distribution of grant types remained stable. Conclusions: Despite the challenging NIH funding climate, the number of NIH grants and funding to palliative care have increased. Given the increased funding allocation toward Alzheimer's dementia and related dementia research at the congressional level, this increase in funding reflects this funding allocation and does not represent overall growth. Dedicated federal funding for palliative care research remains critical to grow the evidence base for persons living with serious illnesses and their families.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Surprising Pharma and Biotech Connections to NIH’s National Cancer Institute

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), and especially its largest and oldest institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), have long been among the best - but perhaps not the most well-known supporters - for the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries, providing non-dilutive funding, scientific guidance, education for potential future employees, and importantly, collaboration opportunities including clinical trials and technology licensing partnerships. In this study, various databases were used, including the NCI Technology Transfer Center (TTC) internal agreement database, NIH technology licensing database, Global Data, Pitchbook, and NIH RePORTER, to explore and analyze collaborations and licensing partnerships between NCI TTC and life science and pharmaceutical companies. For early-stage companies receiving funding or taking part in collaborations and licensing, there is a significant relationship between these NIH agreements and successful financial exits. NCI support not only reaches these early-stage firms but also extends to the Top 20 pharmaceutical companies. These two findings highlight the importance of NCI collaborations for both early-stage and established life science and pharmaceutical companies.

Early Life Nutrition Research Supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health from 2018–2020

ObjectivesThe Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020–2025 includes guidelines for pregnancy, lactation, and children from birth to age 24-months (B-24) to reflect the growing body of evidence about appropriate nutrition during the earliest stages of life. Guidelines are based on a thorough review of the existing scientific evidence by the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). The Scientific Report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee pointed to the need for additional research during these life stages. The objective of this study was to enumerate early life (pregnancy, lactation, and B-24) nutrition research needs that are already being addressed by the scientific community and to identify remaining research gaps.MethodsThe 2020 DGAC Scientific Report was reviewed, and 138 research gaps relevant to early life were identified. Research gaps were consolidated into 13 topic areas. A total of 1,632 nutrition and early life focused research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 2018–2020 were manually coded using the title, abstract, and public health relevance statement available on NIH RePORTER. Projects were coded to determine if they addressed a research gap within one of the 13 research gap topic areas. The main outcome was the percentage of NIH funded (NIH) nutrition and early life focused research projects with potential to address known early life dietary guidelines research gaps.ResultsOf the reviewed and coded projects, 235 (14.4%) addressed any early life nutrition research gap. Between Fiscal Years 2018 to 2020, total costs of projects addressing any gap represented only 15% of total costs for all projects reviewed. Complementary foods, breastfeeding (never versus ever), and frequency of eating were research gap areas most frequently coded as being addressed by a funded project. Iron supplementation, seafood consumption, and maternal diet food allergens were research gap areas least frequently coded as being potentially addressed by a funded project.ConclusionsThis analysis highlights multiple opportunities for changes in the federal government investment in maternal and child nutrition research to support development of effective evidence-based dietary guidelines for the improvement of early life nutrition practices and overall public health.Funding SourcesNone.

Responding to emerging oral healthcare needs with CARE: Design of the CARE curriculum model.

The release of the National Institutes of Health report, Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges, in 2022 identified a pressing concern about oral healthcare and that "the job is far from finished." The High Point University Workman School of Dental Medicine utilized this report as inspiration to facilitate the design of the Clinician-Advocate-Researcher-Entrepreneur Curriculum. The aspiration was to create a novel curriculum and experiential model to prepare learners for the future of dental medicine, including addressing these public oral healthcare needs. This article describes how we conducted this process in three steps: defining the curriculum philosophy, outcomes, and structure. We present this example for those interested in curriculum design and modifications. Our goal is to encourage educators to explore opportunities to enhance dental education as a critical component of the complex system that impacts oral healthcare broadly.

SPARClink: an interactive tool to visualize the impact of the SPARC program.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program seeks to accelerate the development of therapeutic devices that modulate electrical activity in nerves to improve organ function. SPARC-funded researchers are generating rich datasets from neuromodulation research that are curated and shared according to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) guidelines and are accessible to the public on the SPARC data portal. Keeping track of the utilization of these datasets within the larger research community is a feature that will benefit data-generating researchers in showcasing the impact of their SPARC outcomes. This will also allow the SPARC program to display the impact of the FAIR data curation and sharing practices that have been implemented. This manuscript provides the methods and outcomes of SPARClink, our web tool for visualizing the impact of SPARC, which won the Second prize at the 2021 SPARC FAIR Codeathon. With SPARClink, we built a system that automatically and continuously finds new published SPARC scientific outputs (datasets, publications, protocols) and the external resources referring to them. SPARC datasets and protocols are queried using publicly accessible REST application programming interfaces (APIs, provided by Pennsieve and Protocols.io) and stored in a publicly accessible database. Citation information for these resources is retrieved using the NIH reporter API and National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Entrez system. A novel knowledge graph-based structure was created to visualize the results of these queries and showcase the impact that the FAIR data principles can have on the research landscape when they are adopted by a consortium.

National Institutes of Health Funding Trends to Ophthalmology Departments at U.S. Medical Schools

ABSTRACT Purpose To analyze trends in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in ophthalmology and characterize its distribution to departments and principal investigators (PIs) affiliated with U.S. medical schools. Design Longitudinal descriptive analysis. Methods We queried publically accessible data from the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research and NIH RePORTER to determine annual funding trends in ophthalmology from 2009 to 2020. To characterize the distribution of funding, we further ranked the top departments and principal investigators (PIs). Department websites (among other online resources) were utilized to extract characteristics of the latter cohort. Results After adjusting for inflation, we observed a modest 9% increase in median NIH funding to academic ophthalmology departments between 2009 and 2020. In the same time period, among individual PIs, this translated to a 9% decline in median funding. Our results among both departments and PIs indicated a persistent inequality in NIH funding. In 2020, 10 ophthalmology departments received 44% of total funding, which is consistent with findings from prior years. Our ranking of PIs by average annual NIH funding indicated a disproportionate representation of males (76%) and PhDs (58%) in the top 50. Conclusions Overall, the results of this investigation suggest NIH funding remains limited for individual investigators, reflecting the increasingly competitive nature of the grant application process. Systemic alterations will be required to reverse these trends. If not accomplished, nascent and established researchers alike will continue to endure challenges in obtaining and maintaining funding.

Changing Demographics of NIDDK-Funded Physician-Scientists Doing Kidney Research.

Although US physician-scientists have made enormous contributions to biomedical research, this workforce is thought to be getting smaller. However, among kidney researchers, changes have not been fully quantified. We mined National Institutes of Health RePORTER to explore demographic changes of early-career and established physician and nonphysician principal investigators doing kidney-focused research. We searched for National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)-funded K series and R01 awards focused on the kidney that were active between 1990 and 2020 and determined if their emphasis was basic or clinical science. We then used public databases available on the internet to determine if these funded investigators were physicians or nonphysicians, the year in which they received either their MD (physicians) or their terminal graduate degree (nonphysicians), their sex, and whether they received their terminal degree from a US or international institution. Kidney-focused R01-funded principal investigators are aging, particularly among physicians. Moreover, the relative representation of physicians among both early-career and established principal investigators is falling, particularly among those doing basic science research. In contrast, the number and relative representation of nonphysician-scientists are increasing. There is also greater representation of women and international graduates among physician and nonphysician R01-funded, kidney-focused NIDDK investigators. However, although there are greater numbers of women physician principal investigators doing both basic as well as clinical research, women physician principal investigators are increasingly more likely to do clinical rather than basic science research. The physician-scientist workforce is increasingly made up of women and international medical graduates. However, the physician-scientist workforce is older and represents a smaller proportion of all principal investigators, particularly among those doing basic science research.

A Conceptual Framework of Data Readiness: The Contextual Intersection of Quality, Availability, Interoperability, and Provenance.

Data readiness is a concept often used when referring to health information technology applications in the informatics disciplines, but it is not clearly defined in the literature. To avoid misinterpretations in research and implementation, a formal definition should be developed. The objective of this research is to provide a conceptual definition and framework for the term data readiness that can be used to guide research and development related to data-based applications in health care. PubMed, the National Institutes of Health RePORTER, Scopus, the Cochrane Library, and Duke University Library databases for business and information sciences were queried for formal mentions of the term "data readiness." Manuscripts found in the search were reviewed, and relevant information was extracted, evaluated, and assimilated into a framework for data readiness. Of the 264 manuscripts found in the database searches, 20 were included in the final synthesis to define data readiness. In these 20 manuscripts, the term data readiness was revealed to encompass the constructs of data quality, data availability, interoperability, and data provenance. Based upon our review of the literature, we define data readiness as the application-specific intersection of data quality, data availability, interoperability, and data provenance. While these concepts are not new, the combination of these factors in a novel data readiness model may help guide future informatics research and implementation science. This analysis provides a definition to guide research and development related to data-based applications in health care. Future work should be done to validate this definition, and to apply the components of data readiness to real-world applications so that specific metrics may be developed and disseminated.