This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. (December 2024)
The NIGMS supports basic research that increases understanding of biological processes and lays the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. NIGMS-funded scientists investigate how living systems work at a range of levels, from molecules and cells to tissues and organs, in research organisms, humans, and populations. Additionally, to ensure the vitality and continued productivity of the research enterprise, NIGMS provides leadership in training the next generation of scientists, in enhancing the diversity of the scientific workforce, and in developing research capacity throughout the country.[1]
All NIH Institutes and Centers support basic research that is relevant to the diseases, organ systems, stages of life, or populations within their mission areas. In contrast, NIGMS supports fundamental research that does not focus on those specific areas. NIGMS' research mission is aimed at understanding the principles, mechanisms, and processes that underlie living organisms, often using research models. NIGMS also supports the development of fundamental methods and new technologies to achieve its mission. NIGMS-supported research may utilize specific cells or organ systems if they serve as models for understanding general principles.[1]
NIGMS also supports research in specific clinical areas that affect multiple organ systems: anesthesiology and peri-operative pain; sepsis; clinical pharmacology that is common to multiple drugs and treatments; and trauma, burn injury, and wound healing.
NIGMS is organized into the following divisions that support research, research training, and capacity building in a range of scientific fields:[1]
Division of Biophysics, Biomedical Technology, and Computational Biosciences
Division of Genetics and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
Division of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biological Chemistry
Division for Research Capacity Building
Division of Training, Workforce Development, and Diversity
NIGMS was established in 1962. In Fiscal Year 2017, the institute's budget was $2.6 billion. The vast majority of this money funds grants to scientists at universities, medical schools, hospitals, and other research institutions throughout the country. At any given time, NIGMS supports more than 3,000 investigators and 4,000 research grants—around 11 percent of the total number of research grants funded by NIH as a whole. Additionally, NIGMS supports approximately 26 percent of the NRSA trainees who receive assistance from NIH.[1]
Jon Lorsch, Ph.D., current director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences
Among the advances that scientists have made with NIGMS support are:
Discovering a gene-silencing process called RNA interference,[5] or RNAi, that is both a powerful research tool and a promising new approach for treating diseases.
Revealing how a protein's shape[6] affects its function, which plays a key role in health and disease and also informs the design of new drugs.
Increasing survival from burn injury,[7] in part by improving methods of wound care, nutrition and infection control.
Shedding light on the critical functions of carbohydrates,[8] sugar molecules found on all living cells that are vital to fertilization, inflammation, blood clotting and viral infection.
Modeling infectious disease outbreaks[9] and the impact of interventions through computer simulations to provide valuable information to public health policymakers.
Developing new methods to look inside cells[10] and other living systems. These approaches have advanced what we know about basic life processes in a range of organisms.
Notes and references
1 2 3 4 "Overview". National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Retrieved 2024-12-10.
A model organism is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. Model organisms are widely used to research human disease when human experimentation would be unfeasible or unethical. This strategy is made possible by the common descent of all living organisms, and the conservation of metabolic and developmental pathways and genetic material over the course of evolution.
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH, is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is now part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Many NIH facilities are located in Bethesda, Maryland, and other nearby suburbs of the Washington metropolitan area, with other primary facilities in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and smaller satellite facilities located around the United States. The NIH conducts its own scientific research through the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) and provides major biomedical research funding to non-NIH research facilities through its Extramural Research Program.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It conducts and funds research on brain and nervous system disorders and has a budget of just over US$2.03 billion. The mission of NINDS is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world". NINDS has established two major branches for research: an extramural branch that funds studies outside the NIH, and an intramural branch that funds research inside the NIH. Most of NINDS' budget goes to fund extramural research. NINDS' basic science research focuses on studies of the fundamental biology of the brain and nervous system, genetics, neurodegeneration, learning and memory, motor control, brain repair, and synapses. NINDS also funds clinical research related to diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system, e.g. AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury.
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) is one of the institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is the third largest Institute of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. It is tasked with allocating about $3.6 billion in FY 2020 in tax revenue to advancing the understanding of the following issues: development and progression of disease, diagnosis of disease, treatment of disease, disease prevention, reduction of health care disparities within the American population, and advancing the effectiveness of the US medical system. NHLBI's Director is Gary H. Gibbons (2012–present).
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States Department of Health and Human Services. It supports and conducts research aimed at improving the health of children, adults, families, and communities, including:
A biomedical scientist is a scientist trained in biology, particularly in the context of medical laboratory sciences or laboratory medicine. These scientists work to gain knowledge on the main principles of how the human body works and to find new ways to cure or treat disease by developing advanced diagnostic tools or new therapeutic strategies. The research of biomedical scientists is referred to as biomedical research.
The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) was a center within the National Institutes of Health, a United States government agency. NCRR provided funding to laboratory scientists and researchers for facilities and tools in the goal of curing and treating diseases.
Sanford Burnham Prebys is a 501(c)(3) non-profit medical research institute focused on basic and translational research, with major research programs in cancer, neurodegeneration, diabetes, infectious, inflammatory, and childhood diseases. The institute also specializes in stem cell research and drug discovery technologies.
Brigid L. M. Hogan FRS is a British developmental biologist noted for her contributions to mammalian development, stem cell research and transgenic technology and techniques. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University, Born in the UK, she became an American citizen in 2000.
A biorepository is a facility that collects, catalogs, and stores samples of biological material for laboratory research. Biorepositories collect and manage specimens from animals, plants, and other living organisms. Biorepositories store many different types of specimens, including samples of blood, urine, tissue, cells, DNA, RNA, and proteins. If the samples are from people, they may be stored with medical information along with written consent to use the samples in laboratory studies.
NCRR's IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) promote the development, coordination, and sharing of research resources and expertise that will expand the research opportunities and increase the number of competitive investigators in the IDeA-eligible states.
Ruth Lillian Kirschstein was an American pathologist and science administrator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kirschstein served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, deputy director of NIH in the 1990s, and acting director of the NIH in 1993 and 2000-2002.
George Quentin Daley is the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. He was formerly the Robert A. Stranahan Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Boston Children's Hospital, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Associate Director of Children's Stem Cell Program, a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He is a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2007–2008).
Lucy Shapiro is an American developmental biologist. She is a professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and the director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.
Quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) is a discipline within biomedical research that uses mathematical computer models to characterize biological systems, disease processes and drug pharmacology. QSP can be viewed as a sub-discipline of pharmacometrics that focuses on modeling the mechanisms of drug pharmacokinetics (PK), pharmacodynamics (PD), and disease processes using a systems pharmacology point of view. QSP models are typically defined by systems of ordinary differential equations (ODE) that depict the dynamical properties of the interaction between the drug and the biological system.
Stephanie L. Constant is an American immunologist and science administrator. She was an associate professor at George Washington University and a scientific review officer at National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute before becoming chief of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences Office of Scientific Review in 2017.
Gary L. Johnson is an American scientist and Professor recognized for his work with oncogenes and stem cells in the fields of molecular pharmacology and cancer cell biology. His other research interests include signaling networks controlling cell function and disease and the behavior of the kinome en masse in cancer.
Susan Kathryn Gregurick is an American computational chemist. She is the associate director for data science at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Gregurick is the director of the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
