FasterCures - Intramural Research Program Task Force Recommendations

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Intramural Research Program Task Force Recommendations

1) NIH should articulate an overarching mission for the IRP and strategies for meeting goals over the next five years, focused specifically on advancing translational and clinical research in the interest of public health.

The incoming NIH Director should rapidly undertake an inclusive planning exercise to create the new mission statement for the IRP.

Following the completion of the mission statement, the Scientific Directors of the relevant institute and centers, in collaboration with the Boards of Scientific Counselors, should develop a five-year organizational and strategic plan for aligning their respective intramural programs with the mission.

NIH leadership must provide increased guidance to institutes and centers and their Scientific Directors and Boards of Scientific Counselors to improve the quality of their programmatic and individual reviews in ways that support and reinforce the mission. Review criteria must be altered to more aggressively encourage risk-taking and innovation in translational and clinical research.

2) The Clinical Center must be fully utilized and the IRP’s clinical research program should be expanded.

The NIH Director should charge the newly constituted Scientific Management Review Board with the task of reviewing options for funding the Clinical Center to enhance greater utilization and removing the current disincentives for use.

Create streamlined mechanisms by which extramural researchers and industry can more fully use the Clinical Center for projects in collaboration with the IRP.

Explore the possibility of the Clinical Center controlling a pool of funds to make use of the facility feasible for investigators who otherwise could not afford it.

NIH should seek the necessary statutory or regulatory remedies needed to compensate clinical investigators at a competitive level.

3) The IRP should be encouraged to systematically and proactively mobilize resources to rapidly and effectively respond to emerging scientific challenges and opportunities.

Within the first year of his or her term, the new NIH Director, in collaboration with NIH leadership and the HHS Secretary should identify existing capacities to achieve this goal. In particular, NIH should clarify and/or reverse the arbitrary and misinterpreted prohibition on commingling of IRP and ERP resources.

NIH must explore ethical options for working with industry on a more impromptu and/or timelier basis.

NIH should revisit the current individual conflict of interest policy to assess whether it is interfering with recruitment, retention, or innovation in translational and clinical research.

NIH should develop a policy on institutional conflicts of interest.

4) The IRP should be the premier national program for translational and clinical research training.

Expand and enhance the clinical scientists training program, creating opportunities for extramural scientists to spend time on the NIH campus pursuing training and research opportunities.

Create training programs in clinical research management, including partnering with FDA.

Expand programs for providing clinical science trainees with research funds that can be taken to an extramural institution upon completion of training.

5) The IRP should play a central role in developing and sustaining large-scale, long-term projects.

IRP leadership should take a more proactive role in identifying such projects and working with the NIH Director and each other to pool resources and focus hiring practices on needed expertise.

NIH should establish ways to maximize use of the IRP core facilities by academic and industry researchers modeled after the programs at the National Laboratories of the Department of Energy.