Research grants can lead to incredible discoveries
February 1, 2009 3 minutes read
Research grants can lead to incredible discoveries
Limiting their reach is counterproductive
Biomedical researchers, whether MDs or PhDs, share a love of the excitement of discovery, and they work the long hours at limiting wages out of dedication toward finding something in their research that will help medical patients, a research expert says.
"When I was in residency, I thought I'd be a clinician, but in my fellowship I got hooked on research," says William Lawson, MD, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
"I chose this area of study because of my frustration in taking care of patients with lung-scarring disease of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis," Lawson says.
"There are no treatments that are effective in reversing the disease process, so the frustrations I had as a clinician drove me to select this area of research," Lawson says. "I hope that something I do in the lab will help me discover a cure or treatment for these patients, and this is what drives a lot of physicians and PhDs."
Another area where more research funding is needed is in finding antibiotics that work against drug-resistant organisms, Lawson says.
"If you look at one of the big concerns out there right now then it's how we're encountering more and more antibiotic-resistant organisms," he says. "So we're in dire need of breakthrough discoveries of antibiotics, and those are not coming."
It would dramatically change the face of medicine if someone made such a discovery, Lawson adds.
Unfortunately, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been under-funded since 2003, and tighter NIH grant funding has created an environment in which scientists are less willing to take chances on breakthrough research and are opting for safer and more predictable grant proposals, Lawson says.
"So we're not having people going out there searching for the novel aspect of something that could totally light up a new avenue that has never been thought of before," he says.
"We should as a research enterprise be funding breakthrough research so we can have the next big surprise," Lawson adds. "It's important to be feasible with things and fund projects that are the next step because they'll get us there, but sometimes it's the big breakthroughs that get us there faster."
Also, research discoveries take time and they require a long-term investment in researchers' careers, Lawson says.
"NIH does a tremendous job, but what has happened is that NIH has been handcuffed by decreased amounts of funding," he adds.
If the NIH funding trend isn't reversed, then the research pipeline will no longer flow with projects.
"We go from the bench to the bedside, and it's important to keep this pathway completely open," Lawson adds. "It's not uni-directional."
While most people assume that scientific discoveries are made at the bench and lead to bigger studies and eventually to clinical research, the process can work in the reverse direction, as well, he notes.
"Sometimes we see things at the clinical side that we take back to the bench to learn more about and then take back to the patient," Lawson says. "It's important to keep these lines completely open and flowing."
Biomedical researchers, whether MDs or PhDs, share a love of the excitement of discovery, and they work the long hours at limiting wages out of dedication toward finding something in their research that will help medical patients, a research expert says.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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