NIH awards total of $1.3m to Lipkin, Klimas, Hanson

[jimells]

Meaning that Lipkin's R01 grant application did not receive a high enough ranking to be fundable but the NIH decided that it was high-priority enough to give it interim funding for one year

What is even more interesting is that institute staff went out of their way to get his grant approved under the R56 program:

Note: Investigators do not apply for an R56 grant. Applications for conversion to an R56 will be selected by IC staff from reviewed R01 grants near the payline margins.

I think this suggests that NIH is finally starting to feel some heat. I suspect there are currently huge fights going on behind closed doors. Perhaps the Dutch boy's thumb is getting tired and he will soon remove it from the anti-research-funding dike.

 

[Sasha]

There's a blogpost here about the upshot of all this for the Lipkin/Hornig microbiome work.

 

[Scarecrow]

@leokitten You were correct:

http://www.meaction.net/2015/08/27/kickstart-for-lipkin-hornigs-big-microbiome-study/

The not so great news is that the NIH only funded them for a single year, not the five years Columbia requested, for collection only, and the money doesn’t nearly cover the patient recruitment and sample collection costs. In fact, they felt it was important to take into account microbiome changes over time as this may give valuable insight; hence the expansion from two timepoints to four timepoints of collection over the one year period.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Looks like strings were pulled for the Lipkin study. Hopefully they are able to do the study in full!

 

[IreneF]

I am a participant in this study. I went to Stanford today for a blood draw and filled out a questionnaire. I will collect saliva and stool samples, have a more blood draws, and fill out more questionnaires over the course of a year. I don't have too much info about it, other than that they are looking for correlations between microbiome and other biological markers.

 

[Sasha]

I am a participant in this study. I went to Stanford today for a blood draw and filled out a questionnaire. I will collect saliva and stool samples, have a more blood draws, and fill out more questionnaires over the course of a year. I don't have too much info about it, other than that they are looking for correlations between microbiome and other biological markers.

Thanks for taking part, Irene - you're doing us all a big favour!

 

[IreneF]

I think they are still recruiting controls.

 

[Justin30]

Can you post the link for recruitment for this study?