COVID-19 threatens faculty diversity: postdoctoral scholars call for action.

Despite substantial investment and effort by federal agencies and institutions to improve the diversity of the professoriate, progress is excruciatingly slow. One program that aims to enhance faculty diversity is the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of General Medical Sciences. IRACDA supports the training of a diverse cohort of postdoctoral scholars who will seek academic research and teaching careers. The San Diego IRACDA program has trained 109 postdoctoral scholars since its inception in 2003; 59% are women and 63% are underrepresented (UR) Black/African-American, Latinx/Mexican-American, and Indigenous scientists. Sixty-four percent obtained tenure-track faculty positions, including a substantial 32% at research-intensive institutions. However, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis threatens to upend IRACDA efforts to improve faculty diversity, and academia is at risk of losing a generation of diverse, talented scholars. Here, a group of San Diego IRACDA postdoctoral scholars reflects on these issues and discusses recommendations to enhance the retention of UR scientists to avoid a "lost generation" of promising UR faculty scholars.

An assessment tool for evaluating the National Institute of General Medical Sciences COBRE and INBRE mentoring programs.

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) mandates that its Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) and Institutional Development Award Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) institute formal mentoring programs to promote the core program objective of junior investigator development. Despite this NIGMS requirement, and the many career-related benefits associated with mentoring, few tools exist for purposes of rigorously evaluating COBRE and INBRE mentoring programs. The purpose of this project was to develop a mentoring assessment tool to aid in the evaluation of COBRE and INBRE mentoring programs. In study 1, a list of items comprising the tool was created via a multiphase item generation process based on input received from subject matter experts within the Cognitive and Neurobiological Approaches to Plasticity Center. In study 2, feedback about this tool was solicited from 78 grant directors, mentees, and mentors representing 21 unique COBRE programs and 8 unique INBRE programs from across the United States. The results provide initial evidence that this tool possesses suitable psychometric properties, is a flexible instrument with many potential uses, and represents a valuable resource for helping evaluate COBRE and INBRE mentoring programs. Having a tool for evaluating mentoring can help promote the grant success and career development of junior investigators in COBRE and INBRE programs and help program directors develop more sustainable research centers.

Using database linkages to measure innovation, commercialization, and survival of small businesses.

Here, we report the results of an outcomes evaluation of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Since the programs' inception, assessments of the SBIR/STTR programs at several federal agencies have utilized surveys of former grantees as the primary source of data. Response rates have typically been low, making non-response bias a potential threat to the validity of some of these studies' results. Meanwhile, the availability of large publicly-available datasets continues to grow and methods of text mining and linking databases continue to improve. By linking NIGMS grant funding records, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data, and business intelligence databases, we explored innovation, commercialization and survival for recipients of NIGMS SBIR/STTR funding. In doing so, we were able to more completely assess several key outcomes of the NIGMS SBIR/STTR program. Our evaluation demonstrated that the NIGMS program performed above baseline expectations along all dimensions, and comparably to other federal agency SBIR/STTR grant programs. In addition, we show that the use of extant data increasingly is a viable, less expensive, and more reliable approach to gathering data for evaluation studies.

The P50 Research Center in Perioperative Sciences: How the investment by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in team science has reduced postburn mortality.

Since the inception of the P50 Research Center in Injury and Peri-operative Sciences (RCIPS) funding mechanism, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences has supported a team approach to science. Many advances in critical care, particularly burns, have been driven by RCIPS teams. In fact, burns that were fatal in the early 1970s, prior to the inception of the P50 RCIPS program, are now routinely survived as a result of the P50-funded research. The advances in clinical care that led to the reduction in postburn death were made by optimizing resuscitation, incorporating early excision and grafting, bolstering acute care including support for inhalation injury, modulating the hypermetabolic response, augmenting the immune response, incorporating aerobic exercise, and developing antiscarring strategies. The work of the Burn RCIPS programs advanced our understanding of the pathophysiologic response to burn injury. As a result, the effects of a large burn on all organ systems have been studied, leading to the discovery of persistent dysfunction, elucidation of the underlying molecular mechanisms, and identification of potential therapeutic targets. Survival and subsequent patient satisfaction with quality of life have increased. In this review article, we describe the contributions of the Galveston P50 RCIPS that have changed postburn care and have considerably reduced postburn mortality.

The role of NIGMS P50 sponsored team science in our understanding of multiple organ failure.

The history of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Research Centers in Peri-operative Sciences (RCIPS) is the history of clinical, translational, and basic science research into the etiology and treatment of posttraumatic multiple organ failure (MOF). Born out of the activism of trauma and burn surgeons after the Viet Nam War, the P50 trauma research centers have been a nidus of research advances in the field and the training of future academic physician-scientists in the fields of trauma, burns, sepsis, and critical illness. For over 40 years, research conducted under the aegis of this funding program has led to numerous contributions at both the bedside and at the bench. In fact, it has been this requirement for team science with a clinician-scientist working closely with basic scientists from multiple disciplines that has led the RCIPS to its unrivaled success in the field. This review will briefly highlight some of the major accomplishments of the RCIPS program since its inception, how they have both led and evolved as the field moved steadily forward, and how they are responsible for much of our current understanding of the etiology and pathology of MOF. This review is not intended to be all encompassing nor a historical reference. Rather, it serves as recognition to the foresight and support of many past and present individuals at the NIGMS and at academic institutions who have understood the cost of critical illness and MOF to the individual and to society.

A national cohort study of MD-PhD graduates of medical schools with and without funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences' Medical Scientist Training Program.

PURPOSE: To determine whether prematriculation characteristics and career-setting preferences of MD-PhD graduates differ according to their schools' funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences' Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP). METHOD: The Association of American Medical Colleges provided deidentified records for the national cohort of all 1993-2000 U.S. medical school matriculants, 3,180 of whom graduated with dual MD-PhD degrees by March 2, 2009. The authors examined prematriculation characteristics, educational outcomes, and career-setting preferences at graduation in association with MD-PhD program graduation from schools with long-standing MSTP-funded, recent MSTP-funded, and non-MSTP-funded programs. RESULTS: Of 3,142 MD-PhD graduates with prematriculation data, 30% were women and 36% were nonwhite. Graduates from long-standing MSTP-funded schools (63% of 3,142 graduates) composed a more highly selective group academically (based on Medical College Admission Test scores) than did graduates from recent MSTP-funded (6%) and non-MSTP-funded schools (31%). Women and nonwhite graduates were more likely to have graduated from long-standing MSTP-funded schools. Controlling for MSTP funding and other variables, graduates with total debt of $100,000 or more were more likely to indicate non-research-related career-setting preferences (nonuniversity clinical practice: odds ratio [OR] 3.58, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.86-6.87; undecided/other: OR 2.15, 95% CI 1.29-3.60). Neither gender nor race/ethnicity was independently associated with graduates' career-setting preferences. CONCLUSIONS: Women and nonwhite MD-PhD graduates more likely graduated from long-standing MSTP than non-MSTP-funded schools. Controlling for institutional MSTP funding, MD-PhD graduates with high debt were more likely to indicate non-research-related career-setting preferences.

Systems biology and pharmacology.

Drug action depends not only on the direct consequences of the interaction between the drug and its target but also on other consequences within the complex physiological system that is the human body. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) has brought together investigators from the emerging field of systems biology with pharmacologists to explore possible avenues for utilizing the concepts of systems biology to explore problems in pharmaceutical action and drug discovery.

Advances in protein NMR provided by the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative: impact on drug discovery.

Rational drug design relies on the 3D structures of biological macromolecules, with a particular emphasis on proteins. The structural genomics-based high-throughput structure determination platforms established by the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI) of the National Institute of General Medical Science (NIGMS) of the NIH are uniquely suited to provide these structures. NMR plays a critical role in structure determination because many important protein targets do not form the single crystals required for X-ray diffraction. NMR can provide valuable structural and dynamic information on proteins and their drug complexes that cannot be obtained with X-ray crystallography. This review discusses recent advances in NMR that have been driven by structural genomics projects. These advances suggest that the future discovery and design of drugs can increasingly rely on protocols using NMR approaches for the rapid and accurate determination of structures.