By Lyle B. Dennis
A delegation from the AASLD leadership, led by President Scott Friedman and President-Elect Arun Sanyal, spent the day recently on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland meeting with the leadership of four NIH institutes that are key funders of liver research. The meetings provided the opportunity to discuss funding mechanisms in liver-related research, growing partnerships between institutes and the AASLD, and a wide variety of policy issues of mutual interest.
The first major meeting of the day was with many of the key leaders of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), at which major existing research initiatives related to hepatocellular carcinoma were reviewed. Potential partnerships were discussed related to patient recruitment for clinical trials conducted under the Early Detection Research Network; opportunities for jointly funded training (“K”) awards; improviing communications with trainees as one of the means of retaining them in the field; advertising grant opportunities through various AASLD vehicles; and, the identification of potential reviewers for NCI grant applications.
After NCI, the delegation met with Dr. Ken Warren, Acting Director, and Dr. Sam Zakhari of the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA). The possibility that NIAAA would play a key role in the development of consortia or networks related to liver research was discussed at some length. A considerable part of the meeting also centered around the proposal currently pending before the Scientific Management Review Board (SMRB) to merge NIAAA into the National Institute on Drug Abuse – a proposal that AASLD has opposed in testimony and in writing to the SMRB.
In the afternoon, the delegation met with Dr. Greg Germino, the new Deputy Director of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), as well as Drs. Jay Hoofnagle and Leonard Seeff. NIDDK, of course, is in many ways regarded as the “home institute” at the NIH for AASLD. The discussion involved reviewing the many initiatives that are on-going in liver research, as well as plans for highlighting NIDDK at the 2010 Liver Meeting ®, which will be the sixtieth anniversary of both NIDDK and AASLD.
Finally, the group from AASLD met with Dr. Ivan Montoya, the Acting Deputy Director of NIDA’s Division of Pharmacotherapies and Medical Consequences, as well as Dr. Jag Khalsa, the Chief of Medical Consequences of Drug Abuse and Infections. There was again extensive discussion about using the K-12 mechanism for training for junior career development and as a means to develop a partnership between NIDA and AASLD.
In addition to Drs. Friedman and Sanyal, the AASLD delegation included Board Secretary Dr. Jacqueline Maher, Councilor Dr. Jake Liang, Councilor Dr. Anna Mae Diehl, and NIH Liaison Committee Chair Dr. Gyongyi Szabo. Meeting with NIH’s leadership have become a regular occurrence and have served as a terrific vehicle for sharing information.
This electronic newsletter is a bi-weekly publication of AASLD and replaces the former bi-monthly print newsletter and weekly e-news. Members are welcome to submit articles and may send suggestions to atracy@aasld.org