Headlines: Winter 2021

After 12 years of service, Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, will step down as the director of NIH by the end of 2021. During his tenure under three US presidents, Dr. Collins established bold initiatives to tackle some of the most pressing health issues facing the nation, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, opioid use disorder, rare diseases, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He has also bolstered policies and activities to address workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion. Dr. Collins will continue to lead his research laboratory at NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute.

NIH and FDA have partnered with 10 pharmaceutical companies and five non-profit organizations to launch the Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC), part of the NIH Accelerating Medicines Partnership program. BGTC aims to optimize and streamline the gene therapy development process to help fill the unmet medical needs of the 25-30 million Americans with rare diseases. NIDCR is one of nine NIH institutes and centers participating in the program.

To support large-scale studies on the long-term effects of COVID-19, NIH awarded nearly $470 million to build a national study population of tens of thousands of diverse research volunteers. The award from the NIH REsearching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative will support more than 100 researchers at more than 30 institutions.

NIH is investing about $74.5 million over five years to advance data science, catalyze innovation, and spur health discoveries across Africa. The Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program will establish a data science research and training network across the continent. The 19 awards issued under DS-I Africa were supported in part by NIDCR and other NIH institutes, centers, and offices. The program aims to use data science to develop solutions to the continent’s most pressing public health problems.

Disadvantaged populations experience higher rates of certain diseases and more negative health outcomes. To support bold new research ideas that focus on interventions to address these issues, NIH has awarded 11 grants through the Common Fund’s Transformative Research to Address Health Disparities and Advance Health Equity initiative. The awards, totaling $58 million over five years, will be administered by NIDCR on behalf of NIH.

To study senescent cells, a type of rare and non-dividing cells that plays both positive and negative roles in biological processes, NIH’s Common Fund launched the Cellular Senescence Network program. The program aims to identify and characterize senescent cells across the body, in various states of human health, and across the lifespan. A deeper understanding of senescent cells could lead to therapies that encourage the cells’ beneficial effects while suppressing tissue-damaging effects.

Among adults ages 19 to 22, the use of vaped marijuana and vaped nicotine leveled off in 2020 after sharp yearly increases since 2017, according to survey results from the Monitoring the Future study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Marijuana use in general reached a historic high, but cigarette smoking continued to drop, the researchers found.