Director's Message
During the holiday season, Small Business Saturday promotes shopping at individually owned businesses to recognize and promote their significant community contributions. It’s always Small Business Day at NCATS, since throughout the year, the Center supports entrepreneurship as an integral part of advancing translational science to get more treatments to more patients more quickly.
Read more in the latest Director's Message.
Christopher P. Austin, M.D.
What's New at NCATS?
Register Now for Rare Disease Day at NIH
NCATS Seeks Input for Strategic Plan
Students Find Adventure at NCATS
GARD Named November Resource of the Month
CTSA Program Domain Task Forces: Spotlight on Informatics
Austin Participates in FasterCures’ Disruptors Panel
Common Rule Input Deadline Is Jan. 6, 2016
Collaborate with NCATS Scientists
Register Now for Rare Disease Day at NIH
The next Rare Disease Day at NIH will take place Feb. 29, 2016, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., in Masur Auditorium, Building 10, NIH campus, Bethesda, Maryland. Sponsored by NCATS and the NIH Clinical Center, the annual event is designed to raise awareness about rare diseases, including the patients they affect and research collaborations underway to address scientific challenges. Learn more about Rare Disease Day at NIH and register now.
NCATS Seeks Input for Strategic Plan
NCATS continues to seek input on the scientific and operational opportunities, challenges and research needs in translational science to help set the Center’s strategic priorities and inform the development of a five-year strategic plan. Details about how to provide feedback are outlined in NOT-TR-16-002. The deadline for comments is Jan. 8, 2016. Learn more about NCATS’ strategic plan.
Students Find Adventure at NCATS
About 40 high school students from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia visited NCATS in November 2015 for a lecture on drug discovery and a tour of the Center’s laboratories. The lecture and tour were part of Adventures in Biology, sponsored by the 4-H Youth Development Program at the University of Maryland Extension. Through the program, students explore topics in biology that are not covered in the usual high school curriculum.
GARD Named November Resource of the Month
The Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD), which is supported by NCATS and NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), was named the November 2015 Resource of the Month on the Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code website. The site, which is made possible through a partnership between NHGRI and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is designed to educate the public on the important role genomics plays in people’s lives. Learn more about GARD.
CTSA Program Domain Task Forces: Spotlight on Informatics
The Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program Informatics Domain Task Force (iDTF) convenes experts from all CTSA Program hubs, the Food and Drug Administration and broader research communities. Led by Paul Harris, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Robert Clark, M.D., University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, with guidance from NCATS’ Olga Brazhnik, Ph.D., the iDTF focus is on creating a sustainable data ecosystem to speed discoveries through the innovative use of informatics in precision medicine, education, patient recruitment, community engagement and dissemination of health information.
Task force members also collaborate closely with CTSA Program representatives on promoting integration of special and underserved populations into translational research across the human lifespan and on study recruitment efforts using electronic health records. The November 2015 iDTF meeting featured an exercise to map the landscape of CTSA Program informatics to identify existing intersections with other networks as well as NIH’s Precision Medicine Initiative. Learn more about iDTF.
Austin Participates in FasterCures’ Disruptors Panel
NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin, M.D., was part of a lively “Disruptors’ Academy: What’s next for venture philanthropy?” panel discussion during FasterCures’ Partnering for Cures November 2015 meeting. Read about the session or watch the video.
Common Rule Input Deadline Is Jan. 6, 2016
In September 2015, the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, known as the Common Rule. The NPRM seeks comment on proposals to better protect human subjects involved in research. Representatives from NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program recently collaborated to host several national one-day meetings about the NPRM and the proposed changes.
The final deadline to submit comments is Jan. 6, 2016. Learn more about how to provide feedback.
Meet More of NCATS' Key Staff
Olga Brazhnik, Ph.D., is a program officer/computer scientist in the Division of Clinical Innovation. Nora N. Yang, Ph.D., is a senior scientist for NCATS’ Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program and the director of portfolio management and strategic operations in the Division of Pre-Clinical Innovation. Learn more about Brazhnik and Yang — and many other NCATS staff members — via NCATS’ Staff Profiles. Check back often to meet more of our team!
Upcoming Events
NCATS Advisory Council/CAN Review Board to Meet January 14
On Jan. 14, 2016, NCATS will hold a joint meeting of the NCATS Advisory Council and the Cures Acceleration Network (CAN) Review Board, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The meeting will feature reports from NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin, M.D., and others about the Center’s initiatives, policies, programs and future direction. For more information, visit the NCATS Advisory Council and CAN Review Board pages.
Rare Disease Day at NIH
The next Rare Disease Day at NIH will take place Feb. 29, 2016, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., in Masur Auditorium, Building 10, NIH campus, Bethesda, Maryland. Sponsored by NCATS and the NIH Clinical Center, the event is designed to raise awareness about rare diseases, including the patients they affect and research collaborations underway to address scientific challenges. Register now.
Visit the NCATS Events page for more information about all Center-related events and activities.
NCATS in the News
- Deadline Extended for Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize • San Diego Union-Tribune • Dec. 17, 2015
- Pursuing Precision Medicine for Chronic Kidney Disease • NIH Director’s Blog • Dec. 15, 2015
- Annual Awards from UAB Fund Four New Community Health Projects • Birmingham Business Journal • Dec. 15, 2015
- Allegheny Health Network, UPMC Collaboration May Improve Diabetes Treatment • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette • Dec. 8, 2015
- Translational Cell Biology Careers Turn on Technological Savvy • Science Careers • Dec. 4, 2015
- How a Former ‘Street Kid’ Scooped up NIH Grants and Shook up Medical Research • STAT • Dec. 3, 2015
- Lower Availability of Omega-3 Fatty Acids Associated with Bipolar Disorder • Medical Xpress • Nov. 25, 2015
Collaborate with NCATS Scientists
NCATS researchers are seeking collaborators in the following areas:
Bridging Interventional Development Gaps (BrIDGs)
Through the BrIDGs program, NCATS assists researchers in advancing promising therapeutic agents through late-stage pre-clinical development toward an Investigational New Drug application and clinical testing. NCATS is accepting proposals on an ongoing basis to collaborate with BrIDGs scientists. For more information, contact BrIDGs@mail.nih.gov.
NCATS Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC)
NCATS’ NCGC staff offer biomedical researchers access to large-scale screening capacity and medicinal chemistry and informatics expertise to develop chemical probe molecules. These resources can help scientists study the functions of genes, cells and biochemical pathways. NCGC also features assay development and high-throughput screening, chemistry and chemistry technology, automation, and informatics. For inquiries or to obtain NCGC probe molecules, contact Ajit Jadhav.
NIH RNA Interference (RNAi) Initiative
Through the NIH RNAi initiative, NCATS provides NIH intramural researchers with state-of-the-art, high-throughput RNAi genome-wide screens for humans and mice. For more information, contact Anna Rossoshek.
Pfizer’s Centers for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI) for NIH Researchers
NCATS is facilitating Pfizer’s CTI program at NIH, which pairs NIH intramural researchers and clinicians with Pfizer resources to pursue scientific and medical advances through joint therapeutic development of biologic compounds. To apply, submit a completed pre-proposal brief to your NIH Institute or Center’s technology transfer office by February 2016. For more information, contact NIH-PfizerCTI@mail.nih.gov.
Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND)
The TRND program provides collaborators with access to significant in-kind resources and expertise to develop new therapeutics for rare and neglected diseases. NCATS is accepting proposals on an ongoing basis through the TRND program for collaborative projects that focus on pre-clinical and early clinical development of new drugs for rare and neglected tropical diseases. For more information, contact TRND@mail.nih.gov.
Toxicology in the 21st Century (Tox21)
The goal of the Tox21 program is to test 10,000 chemicals and evaluate their potential to cause health problems. Any investigator may propose the development of biological assays for high-throughput screening. Proposed assays must be compatible with the high-throughput screening guidelines described in the assay guidance criteria. To suggest an assay, submit a nomination form (PDF - 44KB) to Menghang Xia, Ph.D.