What Does National Institutes of Health Funding Mean to You?
By: Theodore J. Price and Muhammad Saad
The exhilaration of scientific discovery never gets old.
With 40 years of research experience between us, our drive to improve lives through biomedical research remains unwavering.
We all want to live long and healthy lives and, thanks to medical advances over the past several decades, major strides have been made to realize that goal.
Almost all the basic discovery research, and most of the clinical development research done in the United States is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This underscores the NIH’s essential role in the development of nearly all new therapeutics approved in the United States. Therefore, NIH’s investment in biomedical research plays a direct role in creating the understanding and treatment of disease that improves our health and extends our lives.
In addition to the health benefits, NIH investment in biomedical research is a powerful economic engine for the DFW area.
NIH funding is a driver of job creation at UT Southwestern Medical School and at the three Carnegie R1 universities in DFW. It has also played an important role in the growth of the biotech sector in Dallas which is now blossoming at places like Pegasus Park in Dallas and the Richardson Innovation Quarter.
Few people realize that biotech entrepreneurship is often enabled by small business innovation grants funded by NIH.
At the Center for Advanced Pain Studies (CAPS) at UT Dallas, our goal is to understand what causes pain and migraines, and to develop next-generation, non-opioid therapeutics to cure chronic pain diseases.
With NIH funding, we are creating unprecedented insight into the human nervous system to understand pain pathways and how they change in people with chronic pain disease. This work has been enabled by an NIH funded collaboration with the Southwest Transplant Alliance, setting a new standard for human molecular neuroscience across the nation.
CAPS research has led to seven startup spinouts, two of which have developed drugs that have now entered clinical trials for pain treatment: CerSci Therapeutics and 4E Therapeutics.
NIH funding in our community is transforming our understanding of causes of suffering that have bedeviled humans for all of our existence. These investments from NIH are also giving the seed funding needed to move much needed innovation toward the clinic.
Thus, NIH funding fuels innovation, advances healthcare, and strengthens the economy — an investment that will shape the future of medicine for generations.
As researchers at the Center for Advanced Pain Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Theodore J. Price, PhD, and Muhammad Saad Yousuf, PhD, collaborate with experts worldwide to better understand chronic pain and migraines and develop non-opioid therapeutics for those conditions.
