Reading Room Production — page 482

Francis: First, I hope that things have improved greatly with your daughter's illness. Second, I want to give you a heads up that I have called your office to arrange for me to brief you on how things have been progressing with our weekly White House meetings with Heidi Avery of the National Security Staff (NSS). As you may know she is John Brennan's Deputy and is intensively interested in "transforming" how we respond to deliberate and naturally occurring biological threats through the development of medical countermeasures (MCM). She has been making a number of proposals that have been discussed at length at these meetings and have undergone a continual series of modifications based on comments from the participants. The "Program" has now matured to the point of including 4 elements: 1) boosting regulatory science; 2) developing Transformational Centers of Excellence for Advanced Development and Manufacturing of MCM; 3) establishing an independent strategic investment firm (i.e. a government venture capital-like organization) for innovation in MCN; 4) and finally an idea that she got from what NIAID has been doing for some time on a relatively small scale -- the development of a "concept exploitation focus" to help stimulate discovery and translation. What we have been doing is playing an active role from the time a grantee makes a discovery, but has no experience in pushing it into translation. NIAID has served as a "sherpa" or chaperone for the investigators by providing them with NIAID assets (reagents, animal models, connection to the regulatory process, etc.) to begin the process of translation. This is totally compatible with your interest in translational research on a broader scale including the CTSAs , particularly in light of the Cures Acceleration Network Initiative. The reason that I want to brief you is that Heidi is starting now to push OMB for real, new money for all these initiatives and this could be an opportunity for us to put some flesh on the whole Translational Research approach. I propose having a meeting at the end of next week (your office said that this was the best for your schedule) in which I together with my program person, Mike Kurilla, brief you on the entire MCM initiative as well as the role that they propose NIAID/NIH play. In addition, I can fill you in on the interesting dynamics between the White House and HHS. Best regards, Tony Anthony S. Fauci, MD Director National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , onal a a ; i, Bethesda, MD nih.gov e-mail and any of its attachments is confidential and may contain sensitive information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage devices. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) shall not accept liability for any statements made that are the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of the NIAID by one of its representatives.