National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Introduction

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an arm of the United States Department of Health and Human Services of the U.S. federal government. NIAID's mission is to conduct and support research into the causes of allergic, immunologic, and infectious diseases and to develop better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat such illnesses. It does so both by funding its own researchers and by granting billions of dollars annually to researchers in universities and industry to pay for research. Scientists wishing to receive grants must apply to NIAID for them competitively. Some of NIAID's many areas of investigation are acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS, also cited as acquired immune deficiency syndrome), allergic diseases, defense of the public against possible terrorism using bacteria or viruses, radiation exposure, emerging infectious diseases, genetics and transplantation, immune-mediated diseases such as asthma and organ rejection, vaccine development, sexually transmitted infections, and malaria.

History of Organization

In 1948, two government-funded biology laboratories, the Rocky Mountain Laboratory and Biologics Control Laboratory (both founded in 1902), were combined with two divisions of the National Institute of Health into a single organization, the National Microbiological Institute. This was the organization that eventually became NIAID. In 1951, the National Microbiological Institute began distributing cash grants to support research by scientists, and in 1955 was renamed NIAID. In the following decades, the types of research supported by NIAID multiplied and its organizational structure was repeatedly reorganized to deal with this widening range of concerns. For example, in 1986, the organization established an Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Program to coordinate the institute's support of research into AIDS, then a recently-discovered disease.

WORDS TO KNOW

EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASE: New infectious diseases such as SARS and West Nile virus, as well as previously known diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and bacterial pneumonias that are appearing in forms that are resistant to drug treatments, are termed emerging infectious diseases.

GENOME: All of the genetic information for a cell or organism. The complete sequence of genes within a cell or virus.

PANDEMIC: Pandemic, which means all the people, describes an epidemic that occurs in more than one country or population simultaneously.

STRAIN: A subclass or a specific genetic variation of an organism.

T-CELL VACCINE: A T-cell vaccine is one that relies on eliciting cellular immunity, rather than humoral antibody-based immunity, against infection. T cell vaccines are being developed against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C.

A number of research laboratories have been established by NIAID over the years. For example, the Laboratory of Immunoregulation was established in 1980, the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology in 1981, the Laboratory of Immunopathology in 1985, the Laboratory of Allergic Diseases in 1994, and so forth. In 2002, as part of the national response to the terrorist attacks of 2001, an Office of Biodefense Research Affairs was established within the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

Today, NIAID is organized into seven divisions: (1) Office of the Director, (2) Vaccine Research Center, (3) Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, (4) Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation, (5) Division of Extramural Activities, (6) Division of Intramural Research, and (7) Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

Several of these divisions are devoted specifically to supporting medical research:

The Division of AIDS was founded in 1986. Its mission is to increase basic scientific knowledge of the disease in order to end the AIDS epidemic (as of early 2007, almost 40 million people were infected with AIDS worldwide and over 25 million had already been killed by the disease).
The Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Transplantation supports research to unravel the mechanisms underlying disease of the immune system, with the goal of more effective treatment and prevention.
The Division of Intramural Research oversees research by the 17 laboratories owned and operated by NIAID, all located in Maryland and Montana.
The Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases supports research to control and prevent diseases caused by infectious agents other than human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of AIDS. For example, this division funds projects to sequence the genomes of infectious agents. NIAID funded researchers have sequenced the genomes (the complete genetic content of an organism) of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease (Borrelia burgdorferi) and a number of others.

Impacts and Issues

Due to the scope of NIAID's efforts, basic scientific knowledge of many diseases has been greatly increased. Further, a number of vaccines have been developed using NIAID funds. In 2005, NIAID made its first cash research grants under Project Bioshield, the Federal program to defend the public against possible bioterrorism. Its attempt to fund private-sector development of a vaccine for anthrax, one of the candidate organisms for use as a terror weapon, has not yet proved successful, as the vaccine was not successfully developed by its original target date.

Other vaccine challenges for the NIAID include the pursuit of a vaccine to protect against HIV/AIDS. The current NIAID-sponsored candidates for an HIV vaccine are not formulated to prevent infection as do most vaccines, but instead could delay the onset of AIDS by keeping the levels of HIV in the blood in check. Called T-cell vaccines, these types of vaccines could also reduce the ability of an infected individual to transmit the HIV virus to others. Several T-cell vaccines will soon begin expanded clinical trials, and although they have potential benefits in the battle against HIV/AIDS, the NIAID continues to pursue a traditional type vaccine that would prevent the establishment altogether of HIV infection.

Influenza, in both its seasonal and potential pandemic forms, is also major focus of NIAID research and resources. In April 2007, the NIAID announced that its researchers, along with an international team, used anti-bodies taken from humans who survived the H5N1 avian influenza (bird flu) to successfully treat mice infected with H5N1, and also to successfully prevent uninfected mice from acquiring the disease. NIAID researchers plan to move ahead with this research by further testing in animals, and if successful, then in human volunteers. Ultimately, this line of research could yield both a vaccine and an effective treatment for H5N1, a strain (type) of influenza virus often cited by scientists as a likely candidate to begin a new influenza pandemic.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Brower, Jennifer, and Peter Chalk. The Global Threat of New and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: Reconciling U.S. National Security and Public Health Policy. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2003.

Periodicals

Kaiser, Jocelyn. “Quick Save for Infectious-Disease Grants at NIAID.” Science. 303(2004):941.

Web Sites

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. <http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/> (accessed February 9, 2007).

Infectious Diseases: In Context