How do you actually fund the research?

There’s a joke in the research world that you don’t submit a research proposal to NIH until you’ve already done the research. When I was a rookie in the biomedical research world, and I was told this cinema vérité version of things, I thought in typical naïveté, ‘but how do you actually fund the research?’ But, as with all jokes that don’t sink in at first, some experience paved the way for understanding upon a future re-telling.

The National Institutes of Health are federally funded to support cutting-edge research in the biomedical field. But their reputation has increasingly turned towards the slightly-blunted-edge of research. Of course, I cannot say this from first-hand experience, but when working in a socialized profession as I’m doing one hears crosstalk among one’s peers. 

It seemed to be an inside-the-profession issue until the New York Times brought it up on November 22 in an article titled, “A Struggle for Financing After a Promising Discovery.”  This article raised a high-profile example of cutting-edge – I mean, razor thin like James Bond’s cuffs – research not getting funding from the NIH. In particular, the research was concerned with a promising breakthrough in the role/modification of senescent cells in both cancer and aging. Luckily for the research team at the Mayo Clinic, they were able to secure private funding and so the research will continue. But shouldn’t science for the public good be funded by the public? 

The reality is that it’s a nice idea, but in reality this business model doesn’t work – in today’s parlance, it’s not ‘sustainable.’  So, scientists must have a blend of businessman/ businesswoman/ entrepreneur in them to make their work happen. At least by example, it seems that this is the case.

But we’re definitely not about to kick NIH to the road. They are still a staple of the research world, and I look forward to more developments supported directly by them and indirectly by their peer review committees.