NIH Funding: Independent Labs Have Best Success Rate

Compared to university- and hospital-affiliated labs, independent research labs apply for few NIH grants. And the research money they eventually receive amounts to less than 10% of what NIH gives out. However, if you were to look at their success rate in getting grants, the independents outdo their counterparts at universities and hospitals. That conclusion can be drawn from a comparison NIH recently made of various classes of applicants' success rates (the percentage of research applications that are actually approved for funding). Between 1978 and 1987, the independent labs NIH studied - all members of the Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI) - consistently showed a higher-than-average success rate of research grants. For some years, the advantage was slight, such as 1.3% in 1981. But in 1987, the gap widened dramatically: 44.7% of AIRI applicants won grants. In contrast, the overall average was 35.4%. TI: SCIENCE GRANTS Below is a list of notable grants recently awarded in the sciences - large federal grants as well as awards of all sizes from private foundations. The individual cited with each entry is the project's principal investigator. The National Institutes of Health made the following grants for improving infrastructure for AIDS research: $1 million to Harvard University; H. Fineberg. $1 million to Johns Hopkins University; D. Blake. $997,315 to Division of Research Resources, University of Alabama, Birmingham; J. Durant. $996,983 to University of California, San Diego; G. Burrow. $985,000 to San Francisco Public Health Department; A. Back. $876,957 to Yale University; B. Forget. $843,984 to Yeshiva University; D. Purpura. $827,183 to Cornell University Medical Center; R.G. Douglas. $795,297 to Medical Biology Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; D. Mosier. Causes and organic basis of schizophrenia. $6.6 million over five years from the National Institute of Mental Health to Yale University School of Medicine; P. Goldman-Rakic. Merck Company Foundation, Rahway, N.J. made two grants: $1.5 million for construction of a bio-organic chemistry research laboratory for the University of Pennsylvania Department of Chemistry; W. Reinhardt. Also $1 million for the Clinician/Scientist Fund to encourage young faculty to do research and for creation of Merck Centennial Laboratories at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; R. Ross. Male fertility research. $750,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York, to Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, Shrewsbury, Mass. Support of development office and new research initiatives. $600,000 from Aaron Diamond Foundation, New York, to Public Health Research Institute, New York. Cytoplasmic male sterility in corn plants. $75,000 from Iowa state lottery funds to Iowa State University, Ames; E. Hack. What could account for this? AIRI president-elect Mary Woolley speculates that success comes in part from the single-mindedness of AIRI's 70 member labs' involvement in research. She points out that - with no classes to teach or patients to tend - all people at an independent lab, ~~``from the board of trustees to the last employee, have one and only one job: to support research. And if you're finely honed to support research, you tend to do a good job of it." Also, Woolley points out that the singleness of purpose of these institutions weeds out faltering researchers; there are no teaching or patient care duties to fall back on. "If you don't succeed at research, you're out of the business," says Woolley. This form of selection naturally means that scientists who remain at these institutes are those who do research well. This explanation of the independent research institute's success makes sense to Jerome Green, director of NIH's division of research grants. If the numbers didn't show a higher-than-average success rate for independent research institutes, he says, "they'd be very disappointed." If research-only institutions do indeed have an edge in getting grants, is this a self-perpetuating process that will eventually see the independent labs dominating research in the U.S., leaving the universities mostly to teach and the hospitals to care for the sick? "I hope not," says Woolley. "I think the balance of research organizations is healthy the way it is." Admiring as she is of independent labs, she says she wouldn't want all research done there. "I've seen a lot of excellent work done by researchers who do patient care. It keeps them in touch with the end-product of their work." Also, she compares the mix of big and small, hybrid and single-purpose, research institutes to the mix of large and small businesses. "Small independent research institutes are free to move fast,'' says Woolley, so that they can halt lines of research abruptly to reallocate space and resources to a new project. "Take AIDS. We [Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, where she is executive director] were able to move into AIDS work very fast, faster than a lot of big universities." In contrast, Woolley adds, university labs "are like steamrollers. It can take them a long time to move, though they are very powerful when they do." These academic researchers get the major share of NIH money, 75% in 1987. The bulk of this funding, 52% of all NIH extramural money, went to medical schools. Overall, the university share has been stable during the 1980s, varying no more than a percentage point or two a year. The other big categories, relatively speaking, of NIH grantees are nonprofit hospitals not associated with medical schools, which received 8% of the NIH money, and the independent research institutes, which received 9%. The ind-ependents' portion has been stable too, representing the same percentage in 1978 as in 1987. That share brought AIRI institutes 1,340 NIH grants in 1987, totaling $265 million. Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation 23.6 Salk Institute for Biological Studies 9.1 Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology 7.4 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center 7.4 Jackson Laboratory 6.8 Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology 6.6 Eye Research Institute of Retina Foundation 5.2 La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation 4.3 Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation 4.0 Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York 3.9

NIH Funding: Independent Labs Have Best Success Rate

The Scientist Staff

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