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R01 Grant System: NIH Funding Should Support People, Not Projects

00:00:08.00 Let me start by thanking Ron Vale and the iBiology team for this opportunity to talk to you today about a very important subject, which is the NIH support for biomedical funding.
00:00:19.00 And I want to begin by giving you a little background about myself and why I think this is a topic that I should be commenting on.
00:00:27.00 So I received my MD and PhD degrees from Harvard University and moved directly to the faculty where my research was supported by a grant that went to my mentor and department chair group in *
00:00:40.00 So for a number of years, I could concentrate solely on my science and not on raising funds to do that science
00:00:45.00 But of course eventually I needed to submit an RO1 application and I did that, received the funding award, and then took a year off to study molecular biology
00:00:54.00 having been only a cellular immunologist up to that point in time
00:00:58.00 While I was doing this research at the NIH, I was offered a tenured position at the Laboratory of Immunology. I took that offer and I have been at the NIH intramural program ever since
00:01:09.00 For those of you know don't know, that intramural is funded in a way that's quite different from the RO1 system
00:01:16.00 We are retrospectively reviewed every 4 years by an external panel and if we had done well in the previous period, our funding is renewed, and that's been the case for me for now more than 30 years
00:01:30.00 So I've been able almost exclusively on my science, and not on raising the funds for that science
00:01:37.00 And it's enabled me to move from a cellular immunologist to a molecular immunologist, from a molecular immunologist to a cell biologist, studying molecular transport and cellular signaling
00:01:46.00 For the last 15 years to concentrate on advanced imaging, and all those areas, I'm doing things that neither was I originally trained to do nor had known expertise in
00:01:59.00 And those of you listening can understand that it will be virtually impossible in the standard RO 1 Grant system to get funding for that type of switch in careers without already having shown that I could already do the work
00:02:13.00 And yet that's been the course of my career, and I contrast that with my experience and that of my colleagues in the extramural world
00:02:21.00 especially since the sequestration and reduction in NIH funding, more and more of their time is spent writing grants. It's now estimated, by many of them, to be more than 50% of their time taking them away from their lab and their concentration on their science
00:02:38.00 And the awards have been almost stocastic at a certain level in terms of the relationship of the quality of the science that they are doing and the ability to maintain continuous support
00:02:53.00 The system has become staltified in the sense that there is a very formal rubric for how grants are written. For example, you must have a hypothesis on and then aims, and then within the aims, you must have preliminary data for about 50% of what you claim you will accomplish in the future
00:03:13.00 And then in addition to that you also have to say how you will fix anything that doesn't actually work out several years in advance
00:03:23.00 Most of us who do science know that's not how science really works, when you are doing things at the cutting edge of the field
00:03:33.00 So how does that really translate into thinking about going forward. So for many years I have been in discussions with many people about what it is that relates the individual to the likelihood of success in science
00:03:50.00 And for most people, not everybody, there is a combination of innate intelligent, and focus, dedication, hard work, whatever you wish to call it, that in combination that's able to drive those people into their early schooling years to predictable entry into a good college or university, and from that into a medical school or graduate program, and from that end into a fellowship or postdoctoral position, and then even onto a job
00:04:21.00 And although there is an increase in competition at each of those levels, somewhat of a pyramid, the ego structure of people had been formed in a way that they felt they could make it on their own merits.
00:04:36.00 They get a job, they have to go into the RO1 system, and life becomes rather unpredictable in your late 30s.
00:04:47.00 The career you've trained for may not be the career if because of the stocastic nature of funding at the 8 or 10 percent, and the dichotomy between writing grants as opposed to doing science comes to the fore
00:05:05.00 And so how can we square that circle? How can we deal with that?
00:05:09.00 And the answer is the NIH intramural program, the HHMI, and many granting agencies have come up with an answer, and that is to support the person, not the project
00:05:24.00 And I've asked people around the country, at all different levels in their career, if I give you 100 million dollars that you had to distribute to research, and you could only have either the CV or a specific project proposal, which would you take?
00:05:44.00 100% of the answers are the CV. And yet we continue to say the best system is the support of projects through the RO1 system.
00:05:56.00 There's something wrong with that picture. So the proposal that I would like to make is we move to this person not project approach consistently in our funding and replace the RO1 system
00:06:14.00 And how would that work? Why is it especially good for early career investigators?
00:06:19.00 So as I've said everything seems to work okay until you get your first job. And then you get start up funding, you are under pressure fairly early to get RO1 grant, and you spend increasing time away from the bench writing, and writing, and writing
00:06:34.00 And this new scheme if you get the job, you get the money, you get enough support for a lab of 4 or 5 people for 5-7 years, during which time you get to show your stuff. You can then move away from the net incremental work that comes out at your post doctoral training period and do something new, really creative that you would like to do
00:06:58.00 And then at the end of that time period, you'd be reviewed retrospectively, as is done in the intramural program and for Howard Houghs
00:07:05.00 And there's several possible outcomes. The first is, you got very little done. With some exception for time off for family reasons, or health, or in certain circumstances where a bridging funding might be critical completing risking or late starting project, basically those individuals will not succeed in the system
00:07:28.00 And I think most people would agree that after 6-8 years of funding, you still cannot produce work, maybe that's not the best investment of federal dollars
00:07:39.00 A larger group of people will have done very credible work in that period, but not necessarily very groundbreaking or field leading work, they will get renewed, but at the same amount including inflation as they originally had
00:07:54.00 the labs will not grow substantially, I will come back to the reason why that is a little later
00:08:01.00 The third group are the stars. People who've really made major advances. They can ask for additional funding, but they need to be careful. This is not a ratchet system.
00:08:11.00 And that the next cycle of review, if they have not done quite as well, their funding might decrease again. We can discuss or debate whether such fluctuations are good or bad in the system, but I think in the end, they are the appropriate way to have a merit base system that relates your activities and productivity to your funding base.
00:08:36.00 So what are some of the concerns, what are some of the specific implementation issues that arise when thinking about this plan?
00:08:44.00 So the first question is that where does the money for supporting these new hires at this level, and I think the obvious answer is to take what is already in K99 and K21, and those RO1s that junior faculties do get and other like federal support, aggregated and redistribute it.
00:09:04.00 that will limit the number of people who will be employed as new faculty in this way, but I will come back in the end why that's absolutely critical
00:09:13.00 the second thing is are these awards made to individuals who bring them with them when they get a job, or is it through institutions that have block grants that then distribute this to their new hires? And I favor the latter for a very simple set of reasons.
00:09:28.00 First of all, if you estimate that there are a few hundred new biomedical research openings around the country, and on average there tend to be 2-300 applicants for each of those, even accounting those who apply to 5-10 institutions, that several thousand new proposals that would have been reviewed, and vetted by NIH each year.
00:09:54.00 Even if that was done well, the individuals getting the money would not be matched to getting the money for each opening. Whereas the institutions can award this funding directly to those they wish to hire
00:10:08.00 Other people who have said gee, maybe the institution will use that money in inappropriate ways
00:10:15.00 I think that's not necessarily the case, and the renew of that money for continual hires will be based on how well the people they have hired in the previous round do when they go into the retrospective review system
00:10:29.00 If that money doesn't go directly to those individuals, and if they are not supported by the institution, there is likely to be worse success at that level and the loss of the funding. Even the top institutions, once this system is in place, will be at a difficulty in hiring those people if they cannot make these offers or spent enormous amounts of their resources to give equivalent funding to those they hire.
00:10:57.00 There are other benefits from this approach. In terms of the review, the panels can be broader than they are now, they are fewer things grants to review or applicants to review, if you roll everything into a single, or maybe two applications. Maybe 1 or 2 institutes depdening on the nature of your work. That lightens the load.
00:11:21.00 And it allows more people to participate in review process. And it become less proloquial, less focused on the details of the project and more on the accomplishments of the individuals
00:11:35.00 So let me end by saying, is there a simpler answer to this problem, which is more money in the NIH budget.
00:11:42.00 And the answer you need to do a back of the enveloop calculation. If there is are somewhere 4-10 people in an average size lab, and we'll discount the 20 and 30 person lab you see on the concluding slides of every conference. And people are in the lab for 4-6 years, that means the production rate of 1-2 PI every year
00:12:07.00 The statistics are a quarter of people coming out of such training programs become PIs. So that means the NIH must double its budget every 4 years.
00:12:18.00 And that's simply untenable increase going forward, and doesn't even includes accounting for inflation. So the real solution would have to be population control. As I've said at the beginning, part of what will happen going to this type of approach is to bring fewer people into the system, but to support them better.
00:12:37.00 There need to obe ther adjustments to graduate programs, to people who become research associates and scientists rather than PI. Many people would actually prefer that. I think if we change our sociology to really respecting and appreciating people who do that type of work in the laboratory on a long term basis, that will actually improve our output.
00:13:06.00 And also, by having these smaller groups, it'd be harder to do multidisciplinary work within one group. That will foster longer term interaction and collaborations among very highly competent groups in different areas to really drive the research process forward.
00:13:23.00 So I think overall this is a plan that deserves good discussions among the groups. I've talked to hundreds of students, post-docs, junior and senior faculty, the response from this proposal is overwhelmingly positive, virtually no one has defended the current RO1 system or the project versus person approach we've been taking.
00:13:49.00 And I think there are issues having to do with the non-monolithic nature of NIH with what I've been suggesting, but I think there have been solutions to that. And there are issues about whether the rich will get richer, and how do you portion out the money among institutions, but I think those can be all things that can be well done.
00:14:10.00 So in the end, I hope this has been an interesting discussion for you, and you will consider this in the many blogs and twitterdom arena where these areas are discussed endlessly.
00:14:25.00 That there will be some groundswelling interest in considering a real change to the way NIH does its research support. Thanks very much!

This Talk
Speaker: Ron Germain
Audience:
  • Researcher
Recorded: May 2015
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Talk Overview

Ronald Germain links many of the current issues with NIH-funded biomedical research, such as the increase in competition for funding, rejection of careers in science by talented students, and the inhibition of creativity, to the R01 grant system. He proposes to replace R01s with a grant system that supports individuals, not projects, and holds the recipients accountable through retrospective review. His proposal is influenced by the successful funding programs of the NIH Intramural Program and the HHMI. For more details about this proposal, read his commentary “Healing the NIH-Funded Biomedical Research Enterprise” published June 18, 2015 in Cell. Ron Germain’s views are his own and not those of the NIAID, NIH, or DHHS.

Speaker Bio

Ron Germain

Ron Germain

Dr. Ronald Germain is chief of the Lymphocyte Biology Section and Laboratory of Systems Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. His research contributes to the understanding of how the immune system functions from the molecular level up to the level of the organism. He’s helped elucidate the expression, structure, and… Continue Reading

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