Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus picture

Does Aging Bring Wisdom?

Time: September 16, 2009 from 12pm to 1pm
Location: B340 Rayburn House Office Building
City/Town: Washington, DC
Event Type: congressional, biomedical, research,caucus, briefing
Organized By: Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus

Dr. Shelley Carson
Harvard University

In her briefing for the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus, Dr. Carson examines the deterioration of memory in older adults in a new light — not that of a mind being ravaged by dementia, but instead a mind widening its ability to process more details than that of a younger brain. For decades, cognitive research on the older brain has focused on the decline of thinking abilities. Newer research, however, suggests that much of this observed decline may actually result from lifestyle changes or illness rather than from inevitable brain atrophy.

Dr. Carson highlights how scientists are now beginning to focus on ways that cognition can actually improve with age. Research suggests that brainpower is not declining but that more information is being processed. Dr. Carson reviews the research on age-related brain changes and brain plasticity, and discusses how these changes affect wisdom and creativity. She also discusses initiatives to maintain and even improve cognition in later years.

Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus picture

FINDING AND FUNDING THE BEST SCIENCE: PEER REVIEW AT NIH

Time: July 22, 2009 from 12pm to 1pm
Location: 121 Cannon House Office Building
City/Town: Washington, DC
Event Type: congressional, biomedical, research,caucus, briefing
Organized By: Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus

Dr. Keith Yamamoto
University of California, San Francisco

Each year Congress appropriates billions of dollars to fund the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Did you ever consider how the money is distributed? With a budget of roughly $30 billion per year, the decisions that most strongly influence allocation of NIH funds are made by peer review by groups of professional scientists who typically are themselves funded by NIH. Is peer review really the best way to fund biomedical research? Are there intrinsic problems that compromise it? Could changes in peer review improve the quality of research?

These and other issues are discussed by Dr. Keith R. Yamamoto, an active scientist who has been involved in NIH peer review for almost 25 years, most recently leading an overall evaluation that produced key changes in the process.

Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus picture

Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Health Care for Older Americans

Time: June 17, 2009 from 12pm to 1pm
Location: 122 Cannon House Office Building
City/Town: Washington, DC
Event Type: congressional, biomedical, research,caucus, briefing
Organized By: Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus

Dr. Chad Boult
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Dr. Chad Boult and his team have created a new model of comprehensive health care, called Guided Care, which targets people living with multiple chronic conditions, the typical high-cost Medicare beneficiaries. His plan is based on the simple premise that a patient’s “care plan” is well coordinated, and patients and families are involved in and educated about the care plan. Guided Care is based on the simple notion that one trained professional should guide all aspects of care, uniting the patient, the family, and the medical team.

Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus picture

Using Genes to Redefine Disease

Dr. Atul Butte of Stanford University is at the forefront of the nascent field of translational bioinformatics—a field that seeks to create new diagnostics and therapeutics from genome-era information and data. Here he highlights how new uses for publicly available data have enabled us to ask new questions, including rethinking the nature of disease. Dr. Butte gathers this data on gene activity for scores of diseases. He is looking not at the symptoms or physiological measurements of disease, but at their genetic underpinnings. He performs statistical analyses to map disease based on similarities in their patterns of gene activity. Dr. Butte is able to show how using genes to redefine disease enables the discovery of new causes for disease, suggests novel roles for drugs in the treatment of disease, and, for the first time, allows us to probe the inner commonality across diseases that previously seemed dissimilar.

Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus picture

Molecules to Spy on Cells

Time: April 8, 2009 from 12pm to 1pm
Location: B369 Rayburn House Office Building
City/Town: Washington, DC
Event Type: congressional, biomedical, research,caucus, briefing
Organized By: Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus

Dr. Martin Chalfie’s discussion highlights his ground-breaking research on green flourescent protein (GFP). He and colleagues revolutionized how scientists study the mechanics of cells by getting a visual fix on how organs function. GFP is a small, inert, and relatively nontoxic molecule, easily diffused through living tissue. Researchers now have the ability to follow various cells with the help of GFP. They can study nerve cell damage during Alzheimer’s disease, how insulin-producing beta cells are created in the pancreas of a growing embryo, or how cancer cells spread. In one spectacular experiment, researchers succeeded in tagging different nerve cells with a kaleidoscope of colors in the brain of a mouse.

Dr. Chalfie is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where he is also chair of the Department of Biological Sciences. He shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP.