National Institutes of Health
While in India last week to sign an agreement on diabetes research, Francis Collins, director of the national Institutes of health (NIH), spoke with science Insider about his visit. Collins said the NIH is working with Indian scientists on research studies of cancer and vaccines, and hopes to extend the work on technologies for "affordable health". Questions and comments were published.
Q: India and the United States have been estranged democracies in the past; can you point to a breakthrough in biomedical cooperation
F.C:. Well, I am delighted that our democracies are now partnered together in many ways. I point to the effort to develop and deploy a vaccine against rotavirus, which is the most common cause of childhood diarrhea and cause tens of thousands of deaths each year. ... Now we have a weapon against her. This vaccine was developed in India and is being manufactured in India with very promising results in advanced clinical trials. Expectations are that this can be authorized for future distribution in less than 2 years. This will be a wonderful success and a lot of credit to Mr. K. Bhan [secretary of India's Department of Biotechnology] and many other colleagues in India who have worked on this.
Q: So it will help newborns in India
FC: Absolutely, because parents remember when there were times children were stricken with diarrhea. Usually, they are better, but this [rotavirus] is a very important infection for some children who do not get better and may die as a result. This is a way to prevent this.
Q: For many Indians "affordable health care" when promoted by the West, seems a euphemism for conducting clinical trials cheap Does NIH make. guinea pigs Indians?
FC :. Certainly NIH has no interest in using guinea pigs as everyone in all countries. We see our responsibilities, though, as very important not just in terms of reaching people in our own country, but around the world. We are part of the global village now, and with our friends and partners in India in particular, we are working on ways to make advances and make them affordable. There is not much good if you come with a lead that no one can use it because it costs too much. people may think that everyone in America has all the . money for health care, but we do not do so, we can work with India to find ways such as using cell phones for medical purposes - so everybody wins.
Q: People think that Americans come to India because here the economy is growing, budgets are rising. Are you looking to partner through money or about the resources that you are looking for?
F.C :. K. Bhan and I talked about it, and I think it's really interesting: Neither party is looking for money. We seek collaboration, innovation, opportunities for some of the brightest minds in India and the US to find each other and work together. Yes, we're a little under a fiscal tightening, but we still have a lot of resources to spend on medical research. We admire what is happening in India. ... All this is seen as a golden opportunity to work together.
Q: You helped decipher the genetic instruction book. What lessons did you learn from it, and you medical uses of it is real? It seems that hype after 10 years: Where is personalized medicine that he promised?
F.C :. We are making considerable progress, but I think there were unrealistic expectations. ... What we have now is the basis of the information we did not have before. I can tell you, if you walk into a laboratory in India which human biology and ask a graduate student, "Can you imagine doing this research without the human genome?" They were honest, "NO!" You can see the leading edge ... In cancer, for example, [we are] increase capacity to identify why cancer is different from another and deserves a different treatment - there is no match unique. ... But the bloom is 10 to 20 years away. And everyone should have known that the sequence out.
Q: In the lap of the biomedical community in India, are you excited by what you see
F.C :. I'm very excited. I had the chance to visit with outstanding scientists in places like the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and I met with young scientists who are full of imagination and creativity and innovation all ready to change the world. I feel it is a remarkable time. Frankly, it is a remarkable time for biomedical science worldwide. We never had the capacity now that we understand the problems, understand how life works and why the disease occurs. ... What an incredible experience that is. It makes me want to be 25 again.
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