June 20, 2011 - IMM@BUCT

Purity I Precision I ValueAppointing Berg to head NIGMS “wasone of the best decisions I made whiledirecting the NIH,” says former NIH directorElias A. Zerhouni. “He was critical insupporting innovative programs focusedon encouraging high-risk, but high-impact”research. He also led many key initiatives atNIH, including the support of new investigators,who have typically had a hard timecompeting with more established researchersfor NIH grants, Zerhouni notes. “He didit all with a keen sense for outstanding scienceand an unprecedented commitmentto transparency.”BERG SAYS he really didn’t know what toexpect when he took the helm at NIGMSin late 2003. “It was so different from anythingthat I had done that there wasn’t anyreally good way to figure it out except todecide it was worth doing and jump in withboth feet,” he tells C&EN. Prior to joiningNIGMS, Berg was director of the Institutefor Basic Biomedical Sciences and chair ofthe department of biophysics and biophysicalchemistry at Johns Hopkins UniversitySchool of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. inchemistry from Harvard University.One of the primary reasons Berg assumedthe responsibility of running a $2billion institute at NIH was the budgetclimate in 2003. NIH had seen its budgetdouble from 1998 to 2003, but he predictedthat the trend was unlikely to continue.“Decisions were going to matter becausebudgets were going to likely get tighter, andI either had to accept the position or giveup my right to complain,” he says.Berg was right. The NIH budget and thatof NIGMS have been essentially flat since2003. “If anything, things are tighter thanthey were before,” he notes. The NIGMSbudget was $1.85 billion in fiscal 2003, comparedwith $2.05 billion in fiscal 2010. “Ithink it is going to be a great opportunity forsomebody to come in who really wants tomake a difference because there are going tobe some tough decisions to make,” he says.During the NIH budget-doubling years,abundant new capital flowed into thebiomedical field, and with ready access tofunds, researchers thought they could hiremany new people, Berg recalls. “There arenow a lot more people competing for a piethat has actually gotten smaller in terms ofthe amount of science it can buy,” he says.As a result, success rates for NIH extramuralresearch grants fell from 30% in 2003 to21% in 2010.Berg and others at NIH have consideredThe Leader in Discrete PEGylationProduct # 10249Product # 10170Product # 10868Real-Time Video Imaging of Protease Expression In Vivo Lei Zhu, Jin Xie, Magdalena Swierczewska,Fan Zhang, Qimeng Quan, Ying Ma, Xuexun Fang, Kwangmeyung Kim, Seulki Lee, Xiaoyuan Chen,Theranostics, 2011; 1:18-27Phone Orders: 614 792-2958 I Fax Orders: 614 760-9781Online Orders: www.quantabiodesign.comWWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 29 JUNE 20, 2011