I missed the opportunity to start working in the laboratory of Christian de Duve (who in 1974 would be honored by the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology, but this was not obvious (yet) around 1960, although de Duve's basic discovery of the lysosomes is going back till 1955).
He worked out excellent techniques for the experimental manipulation of Neurospora, as well as other microorganisms, and his many basic discoveries of new phenomena set the stage for the development of the field of biochemical genetics.
The contemporary obsession with individual choice and human agency disregarded even the basic discoveries of late-19th-century sociology: that in any mass society, life chances are unevenly distributed, there are permanent winners and losers, a minority dominates the majority, and the elites are prone to manipulate and deceive.
However, as the field has developed, the NIH has responded proactively to identify roadblocks and to develop solutions that will accelerate translation of basic discoveries to the clinical setting.
This system will provide the international IBD research community with a 'fast-track' functional approach to confirm genotype-phenotype relationships relevant to IBD in order to prioritize translation of basic discoveries to the clinic.
The completion of the human genome as well as the explosion of novel technologies within genomics, proteomics and functional genomics promise to have a major impact on clinical practice, as these technologies are expected to accelerate the translation of basic discoveries to the clinical practice.
"It used to be correct, but now with the basic discovery of CPR we've come to understand that the cells inside your body don't become irreversibly 'dead' for hours after you've 'died'… Even after you've become a cadaver, you're still retrievable".
Last October, the Nobel Prize for physics, for instance, was shared by French and German scientists for their basic discovery of what is known as the "giant magnetoresistance" effect, which enables much more digital data to be stored on a disk drive.
This is more than an extension of NIH's role in promoting research into rare diseases; it's potentially a model for the role NIH could play more broadly in helping promising basic discoveries bridge the "valley of death" between preclinical development and clinical research.
Basic discoveries will remain the lifeblood of clinical development.
