NIH announced August 23 in a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing and a press release its intentions to encourage awardee institutions to participate in protecting the integrity of US biomedical research.

During the hearing, NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, emphasized the US biomedical research community has a vested interest in preventing breaches of trust and confidentiality from outside entities, including foreign countries. Dr. Collins informed the HELP Committee that the NIH sent letters to awardee institutions identifying three areas of concern:

• Diversion of intellectual property in grant applications or federally funded research to other entities, including other countries
• Failure by NIH peer reviewers to maintain the confidentiality of grant application materials, including the sharing of confidential information with other countries
• Failure to disclose to NIH significant support from other sources that overlap with NIH-funded research, including funds from foreign governments, since those failures can distort the NIH grant decision-making process

To help ensure the integrity of US biomedical research, the NIH plans to establish a new working group reporting to the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) that will be led by Roy Wilson, MD, MS, and Larry Tabak, DDS, PhD, to look into these three issues. In partnership with the NIH, other government agencies, NIH-funded academic institutions, and US professional organizations, the Working Group will "identify robust methods to:

1. improve accurate reporting of all sources of research support, financial interests, and affiliations;
2. mitigate the risk to intellectual property security while continuing NIH's long tradition of collaborations, including with foreign scientists and institutions; and
3. explore additional steps to protect the integrity of peer review."

Should you have questions or concerns, feel free to reach out directly to Ross McKinney, Chief Scientific Officer (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Heather Pierce, Senior Director for Science Policy and Regulatory Counsel (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).