New Science April 2022 updates
Hi everyone,
Updates for April!
New Science
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We published a 33,000 word report on the NIH, written by Matt Faherty and funded by Emergent Ventures. The report is the result of months of research and dozens of interviews and provides an overview of how the NIH works at a high-level and at a level of individual researchers.
… One interviewee related stories of two instances when their grants were rejected because they involved technology not ongoing in their lab and, thus, there was no preliminary data. In the latter case, the interviewee had been receiving NIH grants for over forty years, they had served as an editor on a major journal, and had been an advisor for an NIH institute. All that clout and history wasn’t enough to get the grant approved. While such ability to withstand political forces is impressive, the reason the grant wasn’t approved was that the interviewee never worked in the field in which they applied for the grant.
Fortunately, the proposal later caught the attention of a prominent non-profit. The interviewee submitted a one-page application and they “nearly fell off [their] chair” a few months later when they got full approval at a higher funding amount than expected. Their project has since yielded “transformational” progress in the field, and though the interviewee is extremely positive about the NIH overall, they are concerned about the lack of risk-tolerance in study sections. …
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Deadline for our one-year fellowship is today, meaning it’s the last chance to apply in the current cycle. We are extremely impressed with applications so far and are looking forward to selecting fellows.
- Our summer fellowship starts in less than a month and we are very excited to be sharing more about the fellows’ projects soon.
Miscellaneous
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One of our mentors, the amazing Sam Rodriques, runs The Applied Biotechnology Laboratory in London and is hiring:
The Applied Biotechnology Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London is recruiting scientists to lead projects in drug delivery and diagnostics. We sit at the interface between bioengineering and biotechnology entrepreneurship: our goal is to develop new technologies to map or control biological systems, and then spin those technologies out to maximize impact. Previous technologies we have invented include Slide-seq (PMID 30923225), Timestamps (PMID 33077959), and Implosion Fabrication (PMID 30545883), and four companies have been founded based on technologies we have developed so far. Our main areas of focus include new cell-type-specific delivery strategies for gene and cell therapies, new protein engineering strategies, and new liquid biopsy techniques. For students and postdocs who haven’t started companies before, we provide a bridge, a way for them to invent new technologies in an environment that encourages commercialization. We also attract former founders who use the lab as a studio to explore ultra high-risk new ideas that will form the basis for their next company. We have an extensive network of investors; a stable of entrepreneurial advisors; pre-negotiated terms for IP so lab members can either spin their inventions out or benefit from their inventions through licensing deals; and many other resources that academic labs usually lack to help lab members on their journey.
If inventing and deploying groundbreaking new technologies sounds exciting to you, find out more at appliedbiotechlab.com, or get in touch at appliedbiotechlab@gmail.com.
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Milan Cvitkovic has excellent Rules for Conferences.
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Biden’s ARPA-H is moving forward. Exciting.
An HHS spokesperson confirms to STAT in a statement that ARPA-H will be “under the auspices” of the NIH but that its director will report directly to Becerra. The new agency will exist “as a new member of the HHS family with a distinct mission that will focus on rapid application of knowledge and catalyzing breakthrough medicines and technologies,” he writes in the statement.
Some who’ve weighed in on the debate around where ARPA-H should be housed, including former DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, tell STAT that the NIH is too conservative to support the initiative. Geoffrey Ling and Michael Stebbins, two former federal researchers who years ago authored the original white paper outlining the ARPA-H concept, also oppose ARPA-H being housed within the NIH, STAT reports.
Stay Frosty,
Alexey