Big ideas on a shoestring budget-NIH budget crunch forces scientists to get (even more) creative
Science starts with a blank page and a big idea. Then comes the hard part: writing it all down. The process of securing funding takes months — sometimes up to a year — and there’s not always a light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes there’s a brick wall. More often, there’s a closed door and an open window.
But one thing’s for certain: The game has changed. A few years ago, researchers might have crossed their fingers and hoped for funding after a first submission to the National Institutes of Health. Now, they just hope their grant will receive a score — and perhaps a bit of positive feedback to guide their next go-round.
The one thing that hasn’t changed, it seems, is that grant writing remains one of the toughest parts of research.
“I’ve undertaken numerous administrative and management activities over the years, but this application was the most complex task I’ve ever attempted,” says Henrietta Logan, Ph.D., a professor of community dentistry and behavioral science in the College of Dentistry, who worked from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. for months last year on a $17.5 million NIH proposal to establish the Southeast Center for Research to Reduce Disparities in Oral Health at UF. Logan expects to hear a decision sometime this month.
“There’s nothing like a little passion to make a difference in the lives of others,” Logan says. “The passion is really what drove me, because I got tired. Believe me — I got tired and I got discouraged.”
Many irons in the fire
For most researchers, grant writing is a long process punctuated with bouts of frustration and angst. Yet more and more faculty researchers are choosing to write not just one, but upwards of 10 grants each year, in hopes a couple will be funded.
That process is all-too-familiar to Kirk Conrad, M.D., a professor of physiology and functional genomics and of obstetrics and gynecology in the College of Medicine. One of his big ideas involves the pregnancy hormone relaxin, which holds promise for treating women with preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening hypertensive condition.
Last year, Conrad submitted six grants to the NIH and other funding organizations. And he’s not done yet — he plans to submit six more proposals this year.
“It’s a little bit like airplanes coming in for a landing in LaGuardia. We’re all circling,” Conrad says. “You hope that your grant gets a reasonable score so that the next time you might get funded.”
President Bush’s proposed research budget for 2009 was released Feb. 8. While a $29.5 billion NIH allowance might seem exorbitant to the average nonscientist, many researchers were disappointed. That inspires the obvious question: How much does science cost, anyway?
“In an average month, a well-equipped molecular biology lab spends around $6,000 on reagents and consumables,” says Chris Browngardt, a senior biological scientist and laboratory manager in the College of Dentistry. But laboratories can easily surpass that — to the tune of $8,000 to $10,000 per month — depending on the exact nature of the research conducted, Browngardt added.
“There are no freebies in science,” Conrad says. “It’s not a service. We’re not seeing patients or making consumable products and generating all kinds of revenue.”
In many cases, researchers balance several grants at once to ensure a steady flow of income.
“You like to carry at least two or three grants at a time because salaries are so expensive,” Conrad says. “It’s the salary component that’s hard to cover — your own, as well as everyone’s in your lab.”
The waiting game
It hasn’t always been like this. During the past eight years, the overall success rate for applications submitted to the NIH decreased from 32 percent to about 19 percent. Now, applications submitted for the first time have a mere 9 percent chance of getting funded.
Christiaan Leeuwenburgh, Ph.D., chief of the division of biology of aging in UF’s Institute on Aging, says that “a few years back, it would have been a no-brainer” to fund an interdisciplinary program project grant to combat the effects of aging, such as the one he recently submitted to the NIH.
“Today, it’s hard to say there’s a 50 percent chance or a 25 percent chance. Everything’s about a 10 percent chance these days,” says Leeuwenburgh, who submitted 15 grants last year and landed four. “It’s almost a given that nothing will be funded the first time.”
When the NIH budget doubled between 1999 and 2003, many scientists had high hopes their chances for funding would improve. But more researchers are applying for grants than ever before: The NIH receives about twice as many applications now as it did 10 years ago. And with more than 80 percent of the institutes’ budget devoted to existing projects, funding for new studies is hard to get.
“It has been a very difficult time, not just for my laboratory but for a lot of other people,” says Veena Antony, M.D., a professor of pulmonary medicine and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the College of Medicine. “In some study sections, the NIH triages up to 60 percent of all grants that are sent in for the first time — they don’t even get scored. I have a long list of grants that were just sent back to me.”
Antony uses nanotechnology to detect lung disease at an early stage. Her big idea has a potentially lucrative payoff for the 342,000 Americans who die from this condition every year. But even with such promising work, the process is slow: Antony applied for 10 grants last year and received two.
Other researchers have experienced similar setbacks, although none say they were surprised. Conrad’s proposal to study preeclampsia received good feedback this year, but he’s still waiting in line.
“It actually ended up getting a decent score the first time around,” Conrad says. “I was just happy it didn’t get triaged. In our study section, 55 percent of the applications aren’t even scored. And not only was it scored, but it got a pretty good score — just not enough to be funded.”
When asked if the score might have been sufficient in past years, Conrad says, “Close, absolutely. I think it might have been. But we’ll revise it and resubmit. Hopefully we’ll get the same reviewers.”
Such cheerful acceptance might seem at odds with the amount of hard work and effort that goes into preparing an unsuccessful proposal. But there are two sides to the coin: There’s rejection … and then there’s rejection accompanied by encouragement to resubmit. For the researchers lucky enough to make a good first impression, upbeat comments temper the disappointment and provide hope for future funding.
What to do in the meantime?
Conrad, like many researchers, expects his proposals won’t get funded the first time. Or the second. Fortunately, most universities, including UF, offer bridge grants that tide labs over until funding resumes.
“If a person loses their funding, they lose their technician because they can’t pay them,” explains Elaine Young, Ph.D., interim director of the Office of Research Development for the College of Medicine. “When they get their funding back, they have to rehire that technician or hire someone new and train them. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Harald Messer, M.S., a senior biological scientist in the College of Medicine, was informed in December that his laboratory’s funding had not been renewed. He has since secured another job in the college, but he says he was shocked to learn that his position would be eliminated.
“The news was a mixed bag of sorts. I went through the full range of emotions used to describe a break up,” Messer says. “Sadness, anger, denial and finally acceptance.”
Messer is not alone. With so many laboratory personnel affected by the budget crisis, investigators have begun looking for alternate sources of funding. Small grants from individual universities, private organizations and the state government have made all the difference for many labs.
UF offers bridge grants on a competitive basis to investigators who just miss the cutoff for funding from federal agencies such as the NIH or the National Science Foundation. The College of Medicine provides up to $50,000, which is typically matched by the researcher’s department. The money can be used to pay graduate students, technicians and to cover the costs of research supplies and equipment.
Strategies for success
In addition to providing supplemental funding during tough times, many universities have recognized the need to improve grant-writing skills.
“When I went into research it used to be, ‘Here’s an office, here’s a lab, write a grant, get some money.’ And you were basically on your own,” says Young, who worked as a basic science researcher at Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University before taking a research administration position at the NIH and later coming to UF.
“One of the reasons to help people and to train them is that they don’t realize how long it takes,” says Young, who says she has been approached for assistance by faculty members as little as three weeks before a major grant deadline.
The NIH recommends nine months from thought process to submission, but fellowship applications and smaller bridge grants often require less work.
“Some grants take a day to work on, some take months,” says Leeuwenburgh. His massive 319-page proposal took eight months, but he didn’t do it alone. He says there was a lot of camaraderie among the 23 researchers involved, many of whom had collaborated in a more informal manner for about a year and a half before the grant-writing process began.
The new focus on grant-writing skills may have prevented UF from getting hit too hard by the federal budget crisis, Young surmises, adding that many departments have started screening grants for potential problems before they go out.
That strategy worked well for Leeuwenburgh, who solicited feedback from within his group, as well as from a panel of outside faculty members, before submitting his $11.5 million proposal to the NIH.
“We really got some good insight from the different investigators on how to make things better,” Leeuwenburgh says. “It was pretty harsh, but that was good because we still had another month to get things streamlined. It’s a tough game right now.”
Other researchers have formed their own strategies for success.
“Find a unique angle,” says Krista Vandenborne, Ph.D., P.T., a professor and the chair of the department of physical therapy in the College of Public Health and Health Professions. “You can’t just do the same old, same old.”
Vandenborne applied this technique to an $8.5 million grant proposal she recently submitted to the NIH. The idea? She hopes to uncover whether muscle recovery after spinal cord injury is improved by pairing pharmacological therapies with locomotor training, a novel rehabilitation intervention that helps people with spinal cord injuries learn to walk again.
“You have to be a little savvier when there are limited funds,” Vandenborne says. “You have to make sure your package gets a ‘Wow!’ not just, ‘This is good science.’ The reviewers are more critical. They want something that stands out.”
Million-dollar ideas
More and more faculty members are choosing to submit collaborative grants that pool expertise from various UF colleges and departments.
“I think whenever you have big pictures, you want to try to be as collaborative and interdisciplinary as possible,” Conrad says. “We have all this talent around here. Let’s bring everyone together, come up with a unifying theme and submit a grant together. The product is better than if you go in individually.”
Maureen Goodenow, Ph.D., the Stephany W. Holloway university chair for AIDS research in the UF College of Medicine, has gone one step further. Goodenow is collaborating with researchers at five institutions around the state to apply for NIH funding to establish a Center for AIDS Research.
The process started with a planning session last summer. Now, the researchers are preparing to apply for a start-up grant from the NIH to establish a developmental CFAR. If all goes well, they’ll apply for NIH funding to establish a full CFAR about five years down the road. It’s a long process.
“One of our major goals this year is to develop new collaborations, new scientific interactions among investigators at each of the partner institutions,” Goodenow says.
To do that, the CFAR consortium awarded three start-up grants totaling $50,000 to collaborators Rolf Renne, Ph.D., a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the College of Medicine, Virginia Dodd, Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor of health education and behavior in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and Gail Fanucci, Ph.D., an assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Interdisciplinary efforts are becoming more common as the NIH and other funding agencies put an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.
“You can’t just go in with great science anymore. It’s about partnering,” says dental professor Logan, who began building partnerships with her collaborators immediately after coming to UF in 1999.
Vandenborne agrees, saying, “I think they are definitely looking at more interdisciplinary projects; projects that move science into a different direction.
“To do research, you have to be passionate about what you do. It’s not a 9-to-5. It’s a lifestyle. It’s what you do. It’s who you are. You’re trying to find answers.”