Q&As

On 29 January, Johnson & Johnson announced that it will make all of its clinical trial data available through an academic clearinghouse for scientific information known as the Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) project. At the helm of YODA is Harlan Krumholz, a physician-scientist who for almost two decades has led the Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. Krumholz spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about how greater access to data is a boon for medicine.

 In October, Jeremy Farrar took the helm of the UK-based Wellcome Trust, the second largest nongovernmental funder of biomedical research in the world. The Wellcome Trust, with its £16 billion endowment, is far more than just an enabler of biomedical research. It is also a key player in wider science policy debates. Farrar sat down with Daniel Cressey to discuss his Trust issues.

On 27 January, the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) will welcome George Koob as its new permanent head. A neurobiologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, for the past 30 years, Koob, 66, made his name both in the study of alcoholism and in addiction to other substances. His work has long been funded by both NIAAA and NIDA. Elie Dolgin spoke with Koob about what he thinks sets alcohol research apart.

This year saw the launch of the Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund—a new public-private partnership between five Japanese pharmaceutical companies, two government ministries and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In November, the Tokyo-based fund announced its first round of awards totaling $5.7 million. Leading the new $120 million, five-year initiative is BT Slingsby, a US-born scholar of the Japanese healthcare industry. He met with Cassandra Willyard to discuss the new fund and how Japan can help drive the development of medicines and vaccines for diseases of the developing world.

In August, Novartis appointed Ricardo Dolmetsch to be the company's global head of neurosciences—the first new hire for its reincarnated neuroscience division. As a professor at California's Stanford University School of Medicine for the past ten years, Dolmetsch made his name using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to study a rare form of autism known as Timothy syndrome. Elie Dolgin met with Dolmetsch at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in the Technology Square area of Cambridge to discuss how he plans to succeed where so many others have failed.

Thanks to the automatic cuts in US government spending, the approximately $9-million-per-year contract the Framingham Heart Study receives from the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute was reduced by $4 million on 1 August. Overseeing the budget-related turbulence is Daniel Levy, a medical officer at the NHLBI who joined the FHS nearly 30 years ago and has served as the study's director since 1994. Elie Dolgin met with Levy to discuss how he's taking the new funding realities to heart.

In April 2012, an e-mail announcing the impending closure of the Global Health Council sent shockwaves through its community of 325 organizational members spanning 39 countries. As the closure of the GHC approached, several members stepped in to rescue the operation, including Jonathan Quick, a family physician and CEO of Management Sciences for Health. In January, a new GHC board was elected, with Quick at the helm. Roxanne Khamsi spoke with him about the health of the organization.

On 5 July, the UK government announced the launch of a new nonprofit company set up by the Department of Health called Genomics England, which aims to sequence 100,000 whole genomes, with linked clinical data, from people with cancer, rare diseases and infectious diseases—all by the end of 2017. Elie Dolgin spoke with Sir John Chisholm, the executive chair leading the effort.

Doris Meder and Geert Van Minnebruggen had a dream to team up core facilities across the EU so that institutes could pool resources to buy state-of-the-art machines as soon as the tools became available. To that end, they founded Core for Life (C4L), a pan-European project that formally launched on 14 May. Katharine Sanderson spoke with Meder and Van Minnebruggen about how they hope to democratize access to the very latest technologies for life scientists.

The Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) was recently renamed the UPMC Center for Health Security. As director and chief executive officer for the past four years, Tom Inglesby has expanded the center’s focus toward preventing public health crises arising from infectious diseases, pandemics and major natural disasters, in addition to biological, chemical and nuclear accidents or threats. Inglesby spoke with Kevin Jiang about how responses to bioterrorism, pandemics and natural disasters aren’t all that different.

Mandana Arabi leads the Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science, created in 2011 by the New York Academy of Sciences to address the massive global problem of malnutrition. She spoke with Alisa Opar about how the institute hopes to put nutrition research on the scientific map.

The Brain Activity Map is an initiative by the US National Institutes of Health to understand how thousands of neurons work in concert to control behavior and trigger disease. Miyoung Chun, vice president for science programs at The Kavli Foundation in Oxnard, California, has been developing the project since the beginning and is the self-described “glue” between its many diverse stakeholders. Chun spoke with Virginia Hughes about the evolution of the project.

As Sanofi’s new chief scientific officer and chair of the company's strategic development and scientific advisory council, Nabel faces the gargantuan task of reinvigorating the company’s drug pipeline. He sat down with Elie Dolgin to discuss his plan of fostering a new culture of scientific innovation at Sanofi.

In late September, ten pharmaceutical giants announced the formation of a Philadelphia-based nonprofit called TransCelerate BioPharma as a vehicle for sharing resources. This year kicked off with the appointment of its first chief executive, Dalvir Gill. He spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about his vision of how pharmaceutical firms can work together to simplify the process of multisite trials without sacrificing the quality of the data they collect.

In December 2011, Stephen O'Brien stepped down as head of the US National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity and took up a three-year, $5 million 'megagrant' in Russia through a program started a year earlier by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. O'Brien used his money to help launch the Theodosius Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics at Saint Petersburg State University. On a trip back to the US, O'Brien spoke with Elie Dolgin about his new Russian center.

A year ago, Guido Rasi stepped into the role of executive director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), becoming only the third person to fill that role since the inception of the continental drug advisory body, in 1995. He spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about how the EMA is working toward better safety guidance and improved transparency.

In late September, the Association of University Research Parks announced that David Baker would serve as president of the organization’s board of directors for the next year and help guide its strategic goals for the next five years. Baker spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about how the organization hopes to branch out and transform these workplaces.

As the US presidential campaign heads into the final stretch before the Election Day, the nonpartisan alliance known as Research!America is working to put health research high on the political agenda. Mary Woolley, president and chief executive officer of the Washington, DC–based organization, spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about what it will take to catalyze support among lawmakers for biomedical research.

By 2014, the UK will be changing the way it regulates the price it pays for medicines. The government has embraced an idea known as value-based pricing (VBP), with negotiations on how the system will work due to begin this month. One of the most influential thinkers on the UK’s proposed system is health economist Mark Sculpher, director of the Programme on Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment at the University of York. Kate Ravilious met with Sculpher to discuss the value of VBP.

With a budget of $3.3 billion over the next seven years and an independent status, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is tasked with creating the evidence base to help patients and doctors make more informed decisions about their medical choices. Elie Dolgin spoke with PCORI executive director Joe Selby, a family physician and clinical epidemiologist who joined the institute after 13 years as head of research at Kaiser Permanente, the California-based health provider.