Category: Director’s Messages

As the director of NIGMS from 1974 to 1993, Ruth L. Kirschstein molded the Institute’s agenda for basic science, research training and promoting diversity. She also set a tone for the Institute that remains to this day. After leaving NIGMS, Ruth went on to serve as the deputy director of NIH, and, for two periods, she was NIH’s acting director.

From the time she recruited me to NIGMS in 1981 until her death in 2009, Ruth was also my mentor and friend, as she was to many others who worked for or interacted with her.

A new biography by science writer Alison Davis, Always There: The Remarkable Life of Ruth Lillian Kirschstein, M.D., tells the inspiring story of a scientist, physician, administrator, leader, humanitarian, classical pianist, lover of music and art, and devoted wife and mother. This amazing, multitasking woman really was “always there.”

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about an extraordinary woman and her dedication and many contributions to NIH and beyond. The book is available for free in several digital formats.

NIGMS turns 50 in 2012! To mark this important milestone, we’re planning a variety of activities throughout the year, including sessions at scientific society meetings and a symposium on the NIH campus on October 17, 2012. We’re also planning a special page on the NIGMS Web site where you can share your perspectives on the Institute and its role.

We invite you to describe how NIGMS has had an impact on your research or institution, or how it has made a difference in your field. We also welcome your memories or reflections on other relevant topics. The length and format (text, audio, video, image) are up to you. Text can be entered on the NIGMS 50th Anniversary Personal Reflections page (no longer available).

We’ll compile the submissions and post an assortment of them on our Web site in early 2012. While there is no specific deadline, we’d like to receive as many contributions as possible by the end of 2011.

Finally, as a way of sharing our anniversary with the broader scientific community, you may wish to use our 50th anniversary logo (link no longer available) during 2012 on posters and other materials about NIGMS-funded research.

NIH Director Francis Collins today announced his selection of Chris A. Kaiser as the new director of NIGMS. Dr. Kaiser expects to begin his appointment here in the spring of 2012. We are delighted by this news, and we appreciate the efforts of the NIH search committee in identifying and vetting candidates for the position.

A leading cell biologist, Dr. Kaiser has been head of the Department of Biology at MIT since 2004. He joined the MIT faculty in 1991 and became a full professor in 2002.

Dr. Kaiser is not new to the NIGMS community—he has been an NIGMS grantee since 1992 and has served on several NIH review committees. His research uses yeast to study the basic mechanisms of protein folding and intracellular transport, particularly how secreted and other proteins form disulfide bonds. He started this work as a graduate student at MIT in David Botstein’s lab, then expanded on it during a postdoctoral fellowship with Randy Schekman at the University of California, Berkeley. He plans to continue his research at NIH.

In the NIH news release on his selection, Dr. Kaiser said, “In taking this position, I feel a compelling call to duty for national service and to be an advocate for the basic research enterprise.”

We welcome his leadership and vision, and we very much look forward to working with him.

We are pleased that Bruce Beutler, who has been an NIGMS grantee since 2000, is a recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. He was cited for “discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity.” We congratulate him on this great honor.

Beutler has been at the Scripps Research Institute since 2000 but is moving back to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, which is where he worked when he discovered the receptor for endotoxin in 1998.

While we did not support him at that time, we began funding him shortly thereafter to further explore this seminal discovery. Our first grant to him was titled “TLR4 as an LPS Sensor and Susceptibility Locus,” and our second was titled “Mutagenic Analysis of LPS Responses.” The latter grant, which is still active, was awarded as an R01 in 2003 and converted to an R37 (MERIT Award) in 2008.

With this support, Beutler pioneered the use of a novel mutagenesis process in model systems to characterize several key intermediates in the Toll-like receptor signaling pathway of the innate immune response. These and other advances have formed a molecular framework for a deeper understanding of innate immunity, which is essential for normal host defense but which can also go awry, causing chronic inflammatory diseases and sepsis.

Today’s Nobel news comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that the National Medal of Science will go to two of our grantees, Jackie Barton of Caltech and Peter Stang of the University of Utah.

And at the other end of the career spectrum, NIGMS grantee Sara Sawyer of the University of Texas at Austin is among the 20 NIH-funded scientists who were just selected for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. This award is the nation’s highest honor for scientists at the beginning of their professional careers.

We congratulate these grantees on their notable recognitions.