New NIH Center in the Offing

US Congress is close to passing a spending bill that would establish a translational research center at the federal science agency.

Written byBob Grant

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For a brief time last Saturday, National Institutes of Health staffers heralded the launch of a new center, the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), within their agency. NIH director Francis Collins sent employees of the US government's biomedical research body an email that announced Congress's passage of the 2012 spending bill that provided for the establishment of NCATS, which has been somewhat controversial in some corners as it meant dismantling another NIH center, the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). "This is an important step forward in our efforts to speed the delivery of new drugs, diagnostics, and medical devices to patients," Collins wrote of the new center in the message that he emailed the entire NIH staff just before 7:00 PM EST ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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