On December 7, 2010 the NIH Scientific Management Review Board met and voted to recommend the creation of a new Center to focus on translational research. The proposed Center will be called the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and will incorporate existing clinical research programs such as the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA), Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND), the Molecular Libraries Initiative and the newly created Cures Acceleration Network (CAN).
The NIH Reform Act of 2006 capped the number of NIH Institutes and Centers at the current 27, and thus the proposal for a new Center necessitates the elimination of one of the existing ICs. The current plan calls for the elimination of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), with the existing NCRR programs being dispersed either to the new NCATS or other ICs. The Board has requested a report on the impact of the reorganization to be completed before the next meeting in February.
The reorganization is slated to be completed on October 1, 2011, which is the start of fiscal year 2012 . To read more about the plans and to provide your comments, see the NIH Feedback website: http://feedback.nih.gov/.