HHMI to Boost, Broaden Spending on Research

WASHINGTON—The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has promised to increase its spending by $500 million during the next decade as part of an agreement this month that ends its longstanding dispute with the Internal Revenue Service. Researchers, science students, and teachers at U.S. schools and universities may eventually be among the beneficiaries of the settlement, which requires HHMI to spend an additional $50 million a year above the $200 million it now devotes to medical research. The agreement also relaxes some restrictions on the nonprofit institute, permitting it for the first time to finance educational grants and fellowships for independent researchers. "It's an outstanding opportunity for us," said George Thorn, president of HHMI's board of trustees. "The $500 million can all be spent toward areas we're interested in funding. It's a push in the right direction in two ways: more money is available and we now have more flexibility in spending it." HHMI President Donald T. Fredrickson said the institute, which is based in Bethesda, Md., will continue to devote 75 to 80 percent of its annual expenditures to research in genetics, immunology, cell biology and regulation, structural biology and neuroscience. But the agreement permits HHMI to finance work by graduate students in those areas and to make costly instruments available to a larger group. The institute has named Joseph G. Perpich as a vice president in charge of administering outside grants. Perpich, who has degrees in law and psychiatry, developed an ethics program at the Institute of Medicine, and later was an associate director of the National Institutes of Health. Most recently he has been vice president at Meloy Laboratories, a biotechnology firm. Outside Of Hospitals HHMI currently funds a network of about 250 research scientists working in hospitals or medical research laboratories in 15 states. Under the new agreement, it also will be free to establish "select units of our own scientists in institutions that are not necessarily hospitals or academic medical centers," Fredrickson said. He pointed out that during the past three decades HHMI has developed "an intensive research environment." Within the past five years it has moved into a second area involving a research training project for medical students operated jointly with NIH and a project to map human genes. The IRS settlement "now allows us to contemplate a third program," he said. "It's intended to continue our extension outward from the central core of our laboratory work, but nevertheless have some of its basis in the core lab groups." The HHMI board of trustees will be shaping that program later this year, he said, but is "considering how some of those labs, and their partner institutions, may become more engaged in education or training for science outside the standard graduate mode." This might include reaching down to students and teachers at the undergraduate and secondary school levels "to get them turned on" to science. "We'll also be doing some further support of activities within the graduate theater, where we've entirely been in the past," he said, "perhaps helping with instrumentation, or supplying general scientific resources." The board will also consider funding other programs that accord with HHMI's chartered purpose of promoting knowledge within the basic sciences, principally in medical research and education. These might include sponsoring endowments and supporting programs aimed at educating the public about scientific issues or studying the ethics of scientific research, Fredrickson said. Joint Efforts Likely The extra funds seem certain to attract the interest of research organizations and educators looking for ways to stretch their budgets. Asked about the possibility of cooperating with such groups, Fredrickson replied: "Without doubt that overlap will occur, but the degree to which that will occur is very much up to the trustees." The IRS had contended that HHMI for years had not spent enough money to qualify as a medical research organization (MRO) under the federal tax code, and therefore should be taxed as a private foundation. Besides agreeing to boost its annual spending, the institute is paying $35 million in a lump sum to the government to discharge those tax obligations. Greene is on the staff of The Scientist. [For a "Face to Face" interview with Fredrickson, see The Scientist, January 26, pp. 16-17.]

HHMI to Boost, Broaden Spending on Research

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