Table 1.

Examples of NIH tools and resources for researchers.

The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide) lists NIH funding opportunities.

The NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORTER) database (http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm) provides information on projects that NIH currently funds or has funded in the past. RePORTER is helpful for establishing a research network and identifying research that NIH is already funding.

Information about U.S. and international clinical trials is available from clinicaltrials.gov website, though nutritional interventions not subject to FDA oversight, and therefore may not be listed.

The NIH Clinical Center’s website (http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov) provides details on ongoing NIH clinical trials. At this time, use of the Clinical Center is restricted to intramural investigators and their collaborators. However NIH may open the Clinical Center to extramural investigators in the future.

Common Fund Regulatory Science Program fosters development, availability and evaluation of new or improved ways to understand and improve evaluation of product safety, quality, effectiveness, and manufacturing throughout the life-cycle of a product (http://commonfund.nih.gov).

Common Fund Undiagnosed Diseases Program was initiated to promote use of genomic data in disease diagnosis and engage basic researchers to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the diseases so that treatments may be identified (http://commonfund.nih.gov/diseases/).

Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases program (http://www.ncats.nih.gov/research/rare-diseases/trnd/trnd.html) build collaborations with NIH, FDA and academic scientists, nonprofit organizations, and pharmaceutical and biotech- nology companies to speed development of new therapies.

Cures Acceleration Network (http://www.ncats.nih.gov/funding-and-notices/can/can.html) was established to stimulate the development of high need cures for debilitating and life threatening diseases by reducing the number of barriers that investigators face between the time of basic research discoveries and initiation of clinical trials.

The Bridging Interventional Development Gaps program (http://www.ncats.nih.gov/research/rare-diseases/bridgs/bridgs.html) provides successful applicants developing therapeutic agents with access to critical resources in support of pre-clinical studies.

Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules (http://www.ncats.nih.gov/research/reengineering/rescue-repurpose/therapeutic-uses/therapeutic-uses.html) is a collaborative pilot program of NCATS designed to develop partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and the biomedical research community to advance therapeutic development.

Tissue Chip for Drug Screening initiative represents an interagency collaboration with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NCATS (http://www.ncats.nih.gov/research/reengineering/rescue-repurpose/therapeutic-uses/therapeutic-uses.html).