【2010.1.8 《科学》杂志】After Long March, Scientists Create 'Chinese NIH'

rhapsody

摘要链接：http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/327/5962/132-a
全文链接：http://chem8.org/bbs/thread-35186-1-1.html

Li Jiao*

BEIJING—Scientists here rang in the New Year with the debut of China's first biomedical research fund. Last week, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) launched a medical department that expects to disburse about 1 billion renminbi ($150 million) in government grants in 2010.
The department should be a shot in the arm for unraveling disease mechanisms, modernizing traditional Chinese medicine, and moving results from bench to bedside. "It will promote a speedy transition of basic research into clinical application," says Pei Duanqing, director general of the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
For backers of basic biomedical research, the new department is a decisive victory in a decade-long ideological struggle. In 2001, when NSFC first declared its intention to create a medical department, "some people believed that there was no basic research in medical science," says NSFC President Chen Yiyu. That unfavorable climate compelled many scientists to work abroad. In the early 1990s, says Ma Yue, a "poor atmosphere" and a shortage of grants made it "hard to do medical research." Ma left for the United States in 1994 and returned here in 2006 to conduct stem cell research at the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The prevailing winds shifted in 2008, when hematologist Chen Zhu was appointed health minister. He has campaigned vigorously for creation of an agency akin to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Science, 28 March 2008, p. 1748). Although Chen Zhu has not forsaken that goal, he threw his weight behind NSFC's effort. The health minister was "instrumental" in helping to get the medical department off the ground, says Chen Yiyu.
Unlike NIH, NSFC's medical department will not have an intramural research program. Nevertheless, says Stephen Roper, a biophysicist at the University of Miami in Florida, "the target of NSFC and NIH is the same: apply basic research to solving ongoing human disease problems."
Chen Yiyu has tapped Wang Hong-Yang, an expert on hepatitis-induced liver cancer, as the medical department's first director. Wang, director of the International Cooperation Laboratory on Signal Transduction at the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, will spend a third of her time here overseeing the new department. "My job is to clarify the research directions and make sure the best medical scientists get funded," she says.
That's music to the ears of Huang Liquan of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The medical department's initial budget "is an excellent start," says Huang, who believes the new entity will usher in a much wider range of opportunities for cooperation between Chinese and U.S. scientists on basic biomedical research.