Category: News

I’m the director of the newly created NIH Office of Emergency Care Research (OECR), which is housed in NIGMS. For the past 11 years, I was an emergency medicine physician and clinical researcher. So you might be wondering why I’m writing a post for a blog primarily read by thousands of basic scientists. Don’t stop reading, though, because OECR and NIGMS-funded research have more in common than you might think. Let’s take a quick look at one area where basic and emergency medicine research interests converge—sepsis.

NIGMS supports both fundamental studies and clinical research on sepsis, including the PRoCESS (Protocolized Care for Early Septic Shock) clinical trial. This study is designed to determine if early intervention with rigorous, standardized care in sepsis and septic shock can improve clinical outcomes. It’s an astonishingly important effort to address a disease that often presents to the emergency department and that has a mortality rate of about 30 percent. Should the study demonstrate improved outcomes, it will change the care of some 750,000 Americans who develop sepsis each year.

In addition to sepsis, NIGMS funds research in other areas relevant to emergency medicine, including trauma, burn injury, wound healing, and anesthesia.

I’m committed to helping all parts of NIH improve outcomes for patients in need of emergency treatment, and stepping into the OECR position is allowing me to focus on the national challenges that face emergency medicine research. Toward this end, OECR has four objectives:

• To develop and refine NIH’s existing research portfolios in emergency care;
• To coordinate research projects that involve multiple NIH components;
• To create ways to fund new research that impacts patients with time-sensitive medical conditions; and
• To promote the training of the next generation of emergency care researchers.

It’s a big mission for a small office, but we are fortunate to have many energetic partners across NIGMS, NIH and the broader community.

Whether you’re a basic scientist or a clinician, the ultimate goals are the same, so I welcome your interest in and input on OECR activities.

We were very sad to learn of the death of Adolphus Toliver, Ph.D., on March 26. Dr. Toliver–or Tol, as he preferred to be called–was a staunch supporter of diversity. His vision and dedication to increasing the participation of underrepresented minority students in biomedical research resulted in the development and improvement of many NIH programs.

Tol joined NIH in 1975 as the executive secretary of the biochemistry study section in the former Division of Research Grants (now the Center for Scientific Review). He was instrumental in assessing the emerging areas of biochemistry and molecular biology, which resulted in the creation of two new study sections, and increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in his study section. Tol also advised innumerable young biochemists who became successful grant writers and prominent researchers.

In 1994, Tol joined NIGMS as chief of the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Branch. In this position, he found his true calling, because he was a great and natural mentor and was able to continue to touch the lives and careers of many, especially those participating in the MARC program.

Tol’s contributions as an exec sec and as MARC Branch chief will have a lasting impact on science and the scientific community on many levels. However, he will probably be best remembered as the “father” of the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS)  . Now in its 13th year, ABRCMS has grown to a 4-day event that was attended last year by more than 3,300 student and other participants from across the nation.

Many of you have written to express your thoughts on what Dr. Toliver’s guidance and teachings meant personally and professionally, and I encourage you to share them here as well. I think Dr. Peter Lipke from Brooklyn College summed up how many of us feel when he stated that “in Dr. Toliver we have lost a true champion in all the senses of the word.”

Each year, NIH institutes and centers nominate outstanding young scientists for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), which is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government to individuals beginning their independent research careers. The grantees, who must be new investigators in the first year of an R01 or DP2 award, are selected for their innovative research record, potential to continue on this productive route, and community service activities. In recent years, NIH has annually nominated 20 individuals, with approximately 1 or 2 of them being NIGMS grantees.

Among this year’s PECASE recipients are two NIGMS grantees, Niels Ringstad of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and Erica N. Larschan of Brown University. We identified them because of their cutting-edge neuroscience and developmental genetics research, respectively, and their outstanding commitment to education, mentoring and increasing the diversity of the scientific workforce.

Below, they answer questions about their research and PECASE experience and offer advice to other early career scientists.

What does your research focus on?

Neils Ringstad: Our lab studies the simple behaviors of a small roundworm to identify genes that function in chemical signaling in the nervous system. Even though the organism we study, Caenorabditis elegans, has a tiny nervous system with only 302 neurons, these neurons are very similar to the neurons in our brains and use many of the same neurotransmitters to transmit and process information. We’re particularly interested in serotonin signaling pathways, which are important therapeutic targets in psychiatry.

Erica Larschan: We study how genes are precisely targeted for regulation within the highly compact eukaryotic genome. Gene regulation is a fundamental process that is misregulated in many diseases including cancers. We are interested in identifying new proteins that could serve as targets for anti-cancer therapies.

What was it like to come to Washington, D.C., to meet NIH staff, the President and other PECASE recipients?

Ringstad: It was a tremendous honor to be an awardee. We heard a resounding endorsement of basic science and a clear statement of its value to the American people from both the White House and the NIH. That gave me and my group a boost that will last for years.

Larschan: My PECASE visit was one of the most exciting moments of my scientific career. It was a great opportunity to present brand new data from our lab to a broader audience and interact with the other PECASE winners.

What advice would you give to young investigators?

Ringstad: We pick problems to tackle because we see some good in solving them, and we pick them before we know how tough they are to solve. Don’t lose sight of the hopes and expectations that you had for your project before you did your first experiment.

Larschan: The most important piece of advice is to focus on the most exciting and central questions that you can address with your research. It is essential to use many different approaches to rigorously answer the most difficult questions.