Director's Messages

Christopher P. Austin, M.D., will step down as NCATS director on April 15, 2021. Deputy Director Joni L. Rutter, Ph.D., will serve as acting director while a national search for the new NCATS director is underway.

NCATS’ translational teams from data science and informatics are transforming large quantities of data into actionable information.

NCATS is committed to raising awareness about rare diseases and identifying treatments to address this urgent public health issue. The annual Rare Disease Day at NIH event held this year on March 1, offers an opportunity to advance this mission.

NCATS quickly pivoted many of its existing platforms, technologies and programs to address COVID-19 in March. The translational science approaches to COVID-19 similarly can speed solutions for many diseases and future pandemics.

NCATS is coordinating the ACTIV-1 Immune Modulator Phase 3 clinical trial to evaluate if temporarily suppressing the COVID-19 cytokine response as a result of COVID-19 can reduce the severity of disease, shorten hospital stays and save lives.

NCATS’ CTSA Program is supporting NIH’s Community Engagement Alliance Against COVID-19 Disparities (CEAL) initiative and RADx Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) program to reduce disparities in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19.

Two recent examples of NCATS’ innovative approach to clinical trials are the convalescent plasma trials for COVID-19 and the new tissue chips program, “Clinical Trials on a Chip.”

NCATS initiated a collaborative effort with researchers at NIH and beyond to understand the spread of COVID-19 especially among people who were unknowingly infected. Read about the many ways NCATS helped enable this study.

NCATS will continue to prioritize innovative thinking and approaches to help address health disparities racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved populations face in the United States.

To share COVID-19-related data in a quick and secure manner, NCATS launched and supported the creation of multiple data sharing platforms that harness the power of crowdsourcing, such as OpenData Portal, CURE ID and N3C.