As Dean of the medical school, I have an interesting vantage point for thinking about research. There is, of course, the macroscopic view that you expect to hear from me – but I also want to share a more personal perspective about research. First, the macroscopic view – by any number of metrics, Feinberg School of Medicine continues to build its research enterprise. Total grant awards increased by 10% this year, reaching nearly $300 million, about 62% of all research funding at Northwestern. We’ve received 94 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) awards as of October 9, 2009, amounting to nearly $40 million. The ARRA funds are great news and I was pleased to see the aggressive application response by our faculty. The not-so-good news is that these funds are relatively short-lived, and we will all need to advocate for continued biomedical research funding. Why is our research growing so quickly? The answer is a combination of new faculty recruitment, greater faculty productivity, and collaborations leading to larger awards. Bottom line – we continue to make remarkable strides in research, in terms of scale, reputation, and impact. I encourage you to read Dean Rex Chisholm’s excellent research newsletters for more details. Now for a different perspective about what drives research at a personal level. Research is personal to the scientist who creates the ideas. It is personal to the patients who are waiting for a discovery or cure for their disease. It is personal for donors who support people and projects. I have been a physician-scientist for most of my life, beginning with summer projects as an undergraduate and medical student. I still remember pulling lab “all-nighters” to complete long protocols, or sometimes simply because I would start successive, parallel experiments, convinced that the next result would provide the critical clue. Research is engrossing or it should be to fuel the quest for answers, often in the face of seemingly conflicting results. When I evaluate students or faculty candidates, I can’t help but ask, do they have “fire in the belly”? When they wake up in the morning and jump in the shower, are they thinking about their research problem? Okay, maybe I am a bit extreme, but this is my mindset. I recall working on a grant, knowing that I had not yet identified the key experiment - the clincher - that would grab the attention of the reviewers. I didn’t dare go beyond the specific aims until I had this experiment in mind. One night I awoke at 3:00 a.m. and I had the idea. I went to my desk and outlined a new transgenic knockout model that would later be the foundation for many new insights. Research ideas come at strange times and places, reflecting the need to make creative associations and intellectual leaps. Research is also characterized by cycles of success and failure. I am reminded of the famous opening scene on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. After a series of dramatic feats, you see a long jump skier in a horrific crash – in the voiceover, Jim McKay narrates with his mellifluous but melodramatic voice, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” A failed experiment can feel crushing, or at least frustrating, because you need to believe that this time it will work. Persistence is as important as creativity and objectivity. Sometimes you simply have to keep at it and troubleshoot the variables. I learned to celebrate small victories as well as great discoveries. A small victory might be dumping NaCl onto the scale and having it weigh exactly the desired 4 gm. A different thrill is being the first person to see new data, even if there is no one around to witness the celebration. Other victories come in the form of a deductive epiphany. For me, an example was unraveling how thyroid hormone receptor mutations act in a dominant manner to cause a rare genetic syndrome – it took several years and hundreds of experiments but gradually a testable model emerged and each new experiment provided affirmation that we were on the right track. The number of people who truly appreciate the elegance of such an analysis may be small – perhaps only your lab mates or the small cadre of people who work most closely in your field. Nonetheless, each of these small steps contributes to the compendium of knowledge about biology and medicine. As Dean, I feel fortunate to be able to continue my research, albeit scaled down. I am blessed with highly skilled, long-term lab members and brilliant, hard-working graduate students. I enjoy seeing them relive many of the experiences I described above. We also have terrific collaborators, including my colleagues in the Center for Reproductive Sciences. Our PO1 grant, which has been at Northwestern for more than 20 years, was just renewed! I also find it incredibly gratifying to track the progress of former trainees, now scattered around the globe – they are friends as well as colleagues. I started by saying that research is personal for many different stakeholders. A few years ago, we were funded by a Department of Defense program project grant on breast cancer. One of the requirements of the award was to attend a scientific meeting that also included patients with breast cancer. We had, of course, written a compelling introduction about how our project might lead to advances in the treatment of breast cancer. I must admit, however, that when the patients took the podium to relate their stories and encourage us to pursue our research, not just for them but for the many others who would develop this disease in the future, I was affected deeply. I hope that our laboratory has, in some small way, clarified how estrogen stimulates breast cancer growth, and how anti-estrogens inhibit estrogen signaling pathways. One thing I do know – our research is also deeply personal for the generations of patients who will ultimately benefit from our studies, even if they seem incremental at times. I thank all of you – scientists, staff, and administrators - for your contributions to research at FSM. Best regards, 
J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
Vice President for Medical Affairs
and Lewis Landsberg Dean,
Feinberg School of Medicine
Northwestern University |
October 28, 2009