Bioengineering and Imaging Merge at NIH

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) will become fully functional by Oct. 31, burying a two-decade struggle between powerful foes. That fight reached crisis point on the last working day of 2000, when former President Bill Clinton was faced with deciding whether to sign a federal law sanctioning the 19th institute at the National Institutes of Health. To approve NIBIB, he would have to override the opposition of numerous scientific groups and of his Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, whose department oversees NIH. More than 40 scientific organizations and 170 cosponsors in the House of Representatives were in favor of the bill. Yet it looked ready to expire in the Senate during the waning days of the 106th Congress, until Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) unexpectedly ushered it through a voice vote at the close of the Dec. 15 session. A week later, Clinton was sent a letter hastily organized by the American Psychological Society (APS) and cosigned by 22 other science and public health groups, urging a veto. Resistance to NIBIB stemmed from its unusual focus on technology rather than on a disease or organ system. Imaging and bioengineering are conducted in virtually all the institutes, raising concerns that NIBIB would apply much of the funding available for such research to projects unrelated to specific disorders. Since the early 1980s, several attempts had been made to reconfigure NIH laboratories or form centers for imaging and bioengineering, but none of these efforts satisfied the affected scientists. Only an institute has the funding authority to drive investigations by issuing requests for applications (RFAs) and program announcements. A center or lab would always be subject to the disease-related interests of whatever institute funded a given project. A lobbying group called the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) was formed in 1991 and two years later, the NIH Revitalization Act carried a section directing that a study be conducted of bioengineering research. A report followed in 1995, recommending that a central focus be established within NIH for bioengineering. Also in 1995, the Academy of Radiology Research (ARR) was established as an umbrella for biomedical imaging. The efforts of AIMBE and ARR coalesced in early 1998, after a bill failed that would have created an imaging institute, followed by the demise of a bill to create a bioengineering center, a proposal rejected by AIMBE because the center would not have institute status. Nevertheless, under congressional orders, NIH began setting up an office of bioimaging, bioengineering, and bioinformatics (OB3) within the director's office. Bioengineering Defined "Bioengineering integrates physical, chemical, or mathematical sciences and engineering principles for the study of biology, medicine, behavior, or health. It advances fundamental concepts, creates knowledge for the molecular to the organ systems levels, and develops innovative biologics, materials, processes, implants, devices, and informatics approaches for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, for patient rehabilitation, and for improving health." -- Bioengineering Definition Committee, NIH, July 24, 1997 NIH acting director Ruth Kirschstein had not expressed active opposition to a new institute, unlike her predecessor, Harold Varmus. Kirschstein called senior adviser Donna Dean into her office and said if the president signed the legislation, OB3 would be scrapped and Dean would be charged with organizing NIBIB. Clinton gave his imprimatur on Dec. 29 and Dean started her new job on the first working day of 2001. Dean currently has the help of only four people, but she anticipates an eventual staff of about 25. She has put in a 2002 budget request of $40.2 million, and some grants already funded will be transferred from other institutes, bringing the total to roughly $100 million. Dean insists that all research will supplement that of other institutes, not diminish it. A fast-track search for a permanent director is under way, and she thinks the new person might be occupying the chair by spring. Following, in question-and-answer format, is a summary of a recent interview with Dean. Q: Is it fair to say the focus of NIBIB will be on developing new technologies, or will you also be funding other basic research? A: Our intent is to create an environment where people can develop totally new technology that serves bioengineering and imaging. As well, people can do research to develop a basic technology and maybe do some preliminary work to show how it may possibly be related to a wide variety of diseases. So, we will be doing basic research programs just like NIH does, it's just that we will have an engineering or an imaging sciences focus. Q: NIH has a culture built on fiefdoms, if you will. By taking up activities that are included in all the institutes, does NIBIB threaten that culture? A: When I look at the spectrum of science, I guess I've become a generalist over the years. I really like thinking about all these areas of science and engineering and research that may be relevant to medicine. One thing I enjoyed about being in the Division of Research Grants, which later became the Center for Scientific Review, is that in trying to create an evolving structure for grant reviews, we were not beholden to any of the organizational structures of any system. We could focus on pulling together study sections that looked at any area of science, and the areas of science changed over time. I think compartmentalization is not as easy to do now in science as it was 20 years ago. And I don't think it's just the fact that I'm older and more experienced. Twenty years ago, it was easier to draw a line between biochemistry, chemistry, physics, cell biology, endocrinology, physiology. But now, because of tools and techniques and the genomics revolution, and the skills and abilities that the researchers have, you can't draw sharp lines between the fields. What I see is just a series of overlapping, fuzzy boundaries between and among fields. Probably the only boundary that is not fuzzy is the fact that the person who is trained as a PhD cannot go in and do hands-on work with patients. Q: NIBIB also will put new emphasis on exploratory rather than hypothesis-driven research. What are your thoughts on that? A: It's something I've often thought about myself, being trained in chemistry and biochemistry and having done a lot of research in cell biology. I felt that I often sat on the interface between engineering and physics, mathematics and, if you will, internal medicine. And I see the ways of doing research are bringing these communities together. Certainly, Dr Varmus talked about it, even in his early years when he talked about the potential for chemistry, physics, and math to contribute to biomedical research. And Dr Kirschstein has continued that by saying, 'We can't think of any science that isn't relevant to health.' It's well to remember that some underpinnings of modern biomedicine started with the very early researchers on DNA, who were trained in physics. To me, it's just a gradual, logical evolution to where we are in science. As a nonengineer, I think I'm accurate in saying engineers can look at things from the systemic view. They can look at how this piece I'm working on fits into how the larger whole works. That is an approach that can work if someone is trying to develop, say, an implantable sensor. I think that is a somewhat different way of thinking than the individual who is worrying as a hepatologist about liver physiology. Even the imaging scientists and the radiologists are having to think more 'trans-boundaries.' Q: How many scientists might be affected by NIBIB? A: You're probably talking about upwards of 100,000 professional people who will be interested in the institute. I think the potential principal investigator pool is probably several thousand. How many of those will actually come in? I see the potential population of new PIs to this institute will be two groups. One group will already have been involved in NIH programs but they may have been doing things that were very disease-focused or disease-related. They may be interested in more broad, more general approaches for which they do not yet have a disease or body organ correlation. I suspect there will be a growing population of individuals who have grants in two places, at NIBIB and with one of the categorical disease institutes. And then I think there is a whole other population of people who have never been PIs at NIH, because they never saw a niche. That part of it I have always appreciated, from the time I came up to the Division of Research Grants in late 1982. I would go out and give a lot of peer review talks on grantsmanship and there was always a small subset of people whose work didn't fit into what general medical sciences did as basic research. They couldn't say that their work had a disease relevance. I've heard that from the imaging scientists and from the biomedical engineers. Q: Will one of your biggest challenges be in forming partnerships with other institutes, especially from the standpoints of turf and funding? A: In many ways, we could be for imaging sciences and engineering like, for example, NIGMS (National Institute of General Medical Sciences) is for cell biology. They fund a very big piece of basic cell biology but every institute at NIH also funds work in cell biology, because it relates to their mission and function. My second response would be that the institute can do some things, I think, to foster and encourage that kind of activity even at the academic institutions. We have not yet gone out with any new RFAs. It occurs to me that an RFA for a new kind of disciplinary research program or for institutional training grants conveys a message that we are valuing these kinds of new things. Q: In your budget request, you said NIBIB can help to train people 'to succeed in facets of biomedical research that are not yet imagined.' Will you elaborate on that? A: Being provocative, I would raise the question that perhaps the universities, the medical schools and engineering schools, should be seriously examining the question of whether or not the departmental structure is an anachronism. Does it facilitate or does it inhibit the forward movement of scientific and biomedical research? I can't formulate the answer for every academic institution but I know human beings are human beings, and I'm just as protective of the NIBIB turf now as I would be of any other turf, but I also want to pay equal attention to what is really the right thing to do. Q: The rise of huge amounts of data and new technologies is certainly changing the way science is done and perhaps even how researchers assess where the intellectual challenges lie. What do you foresee as the risks and rewards for NIH treading this new path with NIBIB? A: I think it's clear that the era of the single investigator in his or her lab doing research without being in a team is pretty close to over. That's a cultural change for many people trained in the tradition of the single investigator with juniors or subordinates as collaborators. I think we're going to have to help take the lead in figuring out ways that we can make groups of co-equal researchers work together on projects. I think we'll have to find ways to bridge some of the cultural divides that may exist between MDs and PhDs, so they can be equal partners in doing the research. Steve Bunk (sbunk@the-scientist.com) is a contributing editor for The Scientist.

Bioengineering and Imaging Merge at NIH

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