Here is an outline of the new NIGMS initiative for the Study of Complex Biological Systems:

• Complete text of the NIGMS Program Announcement (PA-98-024)
• Purpose: To support new quantitative approaches to the study of higher level complexity in biological systems
• Mechanism: Supplements to existing NIGMS R01, R37, or P01 grants, to support salary and expenses of collaborating expert investigators with quantitative skills relevant to the analysis of complex systems.
• Awards: made through the peer-reviewed competitive supplement mechanism.
• Allowed expenses: Salary, fringe benefits and travel expenses necessary to establish the collaboration will be provided for the collaborating investigator. In other words, you can obtain expert data analysis at no cost to your current grant. Additional funds may be requested for supplies and well-justified items of equipment. It is not yet clear whether these "additional" funds can be justified for the experimental lab. We can see many instances where this would be highly desirable, and we are checking policy with NIGMS.
• Term of award: can be extended to the termination of the parent grant.
• Rationale: "NIGMS anticipates that biomedical research will become increasingly focused on the understanding of biological functions at a higher order of complexity." They see, "...mathematical models and simulations, with reliance on computers to handle large quantities of data, [as being] among the tools that are being developed to analyze and represent complex processes."
• Approach: The Institute feels that "Because often there are formidable obstacles to the development of cross-disciplinary collaborations, NIGMS offers this initiative to encourage and facilitate the process."

Here is how BioInformatics Services might assist individual investigators in using this mechanism to advance their research goals:

• First, this Program Announcement is explicitly restricted to investigators holding current NIGMS grants. If your work is funded by another NIH Institute, I would urge you to call your program officer and ask if a similar initiative is available for your Institute. If so, please let us know.
• If you are eligible, and would like to explore this further, please contact us at info@bioinformaticsservices.com. We are particularly interested in projects that would lead to construction of large scale mechanistic models of particular cell types. For example, we have long standing interests in vascular smooth muscle, and in hepatocytes, but we would be very interested in exploring other physiologically and pathophysiologically significant cell types as well.
• The application must include a specific research project based on the aims of the parent grant, "...but which expands the scope to incorporate new conceptual and/or technical quantitative approaches that are the basis for the collaboration."
• BIS can offer almost twenty years experience in writing this sort of proposal for NIH standing study sections. As emphasized in our list of selling points, we speak the language of basic biomedical research fluently and we can thus avoid the miscommunication that is so commonly experienced in collaborations between biologists and theoreticians from mathematics, physics, engineering, or computer science. Dr. Phair ran an experimental research lab for 17 years at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he understands the difficulties and the potentials of experimental design in living systems.
• BIS can help write a solid, carefully thought out and documented proposal that meshes with your long-term research goals. NIGMS insists the the proposal must make clear "the unique opportunity, afforded by the collaborating investigator's expertise, to (advance) the quantitative analysis of complex biological problems."
• BIS will provide a letter of commitment that goes well beyond the standard, "I would be pleased to work with you on your project." Our commitment will be to materially and measurably advance your research enterprise. It is our experience that detailed mechanistic modeling always yields fundamental new insights that could not be discerned by qualitative inspection of the experimental data.
• Moreover, we will set and meet a series of project deadlines that get the job done in a time frame consistent with the demands of academic life. We guarantee our work will be completed on schedule. You can outsource to an expert and still not have to wait for the new millennium to get your results.
• NIGMS says that these Supplements will be reviewed for scientific and technical merit by an "appropriate initial review group". At this time we have no information on how this group will be chosen, or how reviewers with appropriate quantitative expertise will be recruited. We will try to get more information on this, so please check back for updates.
• NIGMS program officers encourage enquiries about this program. Since BioInformatics Services is located only a few miles from their offices on the NIH Campus, we are in an excellent position to explore their ideas in detail and in person, before time and resources are commited to a proposal.
• Overall, this novel NIGMS initiative has the potential to fund the integrative and computational approaches that you have not had the time or the training to establish in your own laboratory. BioInformatics Services aims to be the world leader in partnering and outsourcing for computational biology, and this support mechanism can bring our expertise to your lab.
• Based on conversations I've had over the past few years, this is likely to be a very popular approach to solving complex problems at the interface of experimental and theoretical biology. If you can see the potential of computational biology as it might apply to your research, call us now at 1.301.315.8114 or send e-mail to me at rphair "at" bioinformaticsservices.com. Let's talk about it.