The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) — an organization established by the US government to enable research on the comparative effectiveness of clinical therapies — has announced its first batch of primary-research grant programmes at a meeting of its governing board in Denver, Colorado.

“Today marks a major milestone in our work as we build a portfolio of patient-centered research that will provide patients and those who care for them better information about health care decisions they face,” said Joe Selby, PCORI executive director, in a statement. “Our funding announcements reflect PCORI’s commitment to a patient-centered research agenda, emphasizing the inclusion of patients and caregivers at all stages of the research.”

In practical terms, the announcement means that PCORI, which was established in 2010 as part of US President Barack Obama’s sweeping health-care reform law, will distribute some US$96 million for research projects across four categories: decisions patients must make on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment options; improvement of health-care systems; communication and dissemination; and efforts to address health disparities. An additional $24-million grant programme that will focus on accelerating patient-centred and methodological research is slated for release this summer.

“We believe there’s a pent up demand for this kind of research, and we’re very excited to see what kind of response we get,” Selby told Nature.

The goal of comparing prevention and treatment options for patients (or groups of patients) is to help them to make more informed health-care decisions, resulting in better outcomes and greater efficiencies. “The question for the patient is often not whether the twelfth drug down the line is better than the placebo,” says Michael Steinman, director of comparative effectiveness research at the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of California, San Francisco. Instead, says Steinman, it is about figuring out which treatment option is best and which is best for the patient. “Traditional research often doesn’t address those questions,” he adds.

The grants also come with the unique stipulation that patients be part of the project team, along with researchers and other stakeholders. This category could include family caregivers, parents, or health-care system administrators, depending on the scope. “We think that will help ensure that we’re getting the questions right and that we’re picking the right outcomes to study — the ones that patients care about,” says Selby. These outcomes could range from survival to quality of life and the ability to function or continue to work amid illness. As Selby puts it, the institute wants to look beyond the simple result of a blood test.

“Rather than specify very discrete questions, we created a framework around the kind of questions that we wanted answered to see what teams around the country will come up with in terms of projects that will have the best impact for patients,” says Harlan Krumholz, a member of PCORI board of governors and a cardiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

“It’s a great idea. No one knows exactly how to do this yet,” says Steinman. “A lot of the work that PCORI will do is in figuring out how to do it — how best do you engage stakeholders in the research process, in addition to the narrow scientific questions.” Steinman notes that there will be hiccups along the way, but PCORI is “carving out its niche”.

Because PCORI is funded by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, its fate is now hanging in the balance as the US Supreme Court ponders challenges to the larger law. The court is expected to issue its decision some time next month. But until then, both Krumholz and Selby say that all PCORI can do is press on. “It’s our responsibility to keep going until someone tells us otherwise,” says Krumholz.

On the heels of Nobel laureate Al Gilman’s announcement that he plans to resign as the chief scientific officer of the US$3-billion Cancer Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) and the leaking of his resignation letter, which raised concerns about the institute’s peer-review process, similar concerns and supporting details are now trickling out from the independent group of scientists who evaluate the Austin-based institute’s research grant applications.

In a letter dated 14 May, the organization’s scientific review council, chaired by Phillip Sharp of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, criticizes actions taken by the CPRIT management and oversight committee — actions that they say are “inconsistent” with statements by CPRIT’s executive director William Gimson defending the integrity of the institute’s peer-review system.  The letter also reiterates the council’s faith in Gilman. In his 8 May resignation letter, Gilman had expressed concerns about CPRIT maintaining a “functional peer review system”.

Gilman told Nature in an e-mail that he believes that both letters address “the same basic issues”.

Among the most damning of the council’s concerns is their assertion that they were not consulted about a $20-million ‘incubator’ award  — the largest ever made by CPRIT — that went to Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, both in Houston. Although the MD Anderson Cancer Center is slated to receive $18 million from the award, the council found their proposal too short (only 6.5 pages), too last-minute (it was approved three weeks after submission) and too skimpy on scientific detail.

“We will be viewed to have approved this award, and the failure to include us in the process calls into question our roles and the integrity of the review program in general. More importantly, this by-pass is inherently unfair to every scientist in Texas who participates in the CPRIT program,” the review council writes.

Incubator grants — to fund programmes and services aimed at commercializing new products for cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention — are not defined by CPRIT as requiring scientific peer review. But the council argues that the activities laid out in MD Anderson’s proposal sound like research. Additionally, “no product candidates were mentioned,” said the letter, “nor is a company involved”. This marked the first time CPRIT has issued an award in this grant category.

“It is clear that the rules surrounding submission, evaluation, and funding of incubators must be clarified,” Gimson said in a statement. “It is my intent to address the concerns that have arisen about the commercialization review process by soliciting input from CPRIT’s stakeholders.”

The review council also criticizes CPRIT’s oversight committee for putting on hold seven multi-investigator research applications that the review council recommended for funding. The letter alleges that this was done because of opposition from certain committee members to a significant amount of the funding going to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where Gilman once served as dean. The review council writes that this amounts to an unfounded accusation of bias on the part of both the council and Gilman, which they “vigorously deny”.

Gimson said that the decision was related to timing and budget issues and confirmed that all seven projects are up for consideration at a meeting of the oversight committee scheduled for 26 July. In his resignation letter, Gilman suggests that he wants to remain in his role through the summer, in part to prevent ”negative decisions” about funding from being made at the same meeting.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a key component of the US  Department of Agriculture’s research effort, has a new director.  Sonny Ramaswamy (pictured at right), an entomologist by training and former dean of the school of agricultural science at Oregon State University and director of its Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station, was officially sworn in this week the USDA announced on 9 May.

NIFA funds research, education and extension programs across the country through the Land-Grant University System and partner organizations.  In a statement, Catherine Woteki, the USDA’s Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics said of Ramaswamy: “He has proven his commitment to students, to the research community and to furthering scientific knowledge over his long career, and I’m confident he will carry that commitment with him every day at USDA.”

The institute has been without permanent leadership for nearly a year, since former director Roger Beachy left in May 2011 after less than two years in office. An advocate for genetically modified crops amid growing enthusiasm for organics, Beachy controversially reorganized the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), NIFA’s flagship competitive grants program, to include a wide variety of interdisciplinary projects from studies on obesity to large scale plant genomics.

Like other science agencies, NIFA may face budget cuts later this year. However, on 26 April the US Senate Appropriations Committee supported NIFA’s request for $1.239 billion for fiscal year 2013, a $36 million increase over 2012 numbers. NIFA’s budget is not expected to be finalized until later this year — probably after the dust has settled on a highly charged 2012 presidential election campaign.

US President Obama announced his intention to appoint Ramaswamy on 9 March. Ramaswamy replaces acting director Chavonda Jacobs-Young.