Letter From Jerry

We are now 7 months from the end of the current ITN contract period, and the transition work for the next 7 years of ITN operations under an NIH Cooperative Agreement is well underway. We recently received some formal feedback from the review group that critiqued our renewal grant application, which you may find interesting: In brief, the professional staff and operations in San Francisco and Bethesda received many positive comments, and our newer initiatives including CTMS utilization, TrialShare and IT consolidation were well received. Reviewers also expressed confidence in the leadership group, but raised two main concerns: First, they recommended a more focused forward-looking strategic plan for inducing tolerance, which we plan to address in the coming months in collaboration with NIAID. We will begin discussing elements of this strategy at the October NSC meeting, and there will be structural changes in our advisory groups to follow. Second, the reviewers expressed concern about the lack of innovation in our mechanistic approach, noting that our mechanistic plans do not readily incorporate new scientific knowledge into the analysis. ITN leadership is currently at work on our response, which will include developing improved ways of formulating and executing our mechanistic agenda. Overall, the review was positive and the proposed budget was recommended for full funding. While this is not a commitment of a specific funding level for the new award, it is indicative of the support the reviewers expressed for the ITN.

After BRI receives an official NIH award notice we will be establishing subcontracts from BRI to UCSF and MGH for transitioning to the Cooperative Agreement funding, which will replace the current ITN contract to UCSF. We have an excellent transition team already preparing for budgeting under the new grant mechanism, and I would like to especially thank the NCO group for all their hard work preparing for closeout of the final year of the contract. The ITN continues to be a group effort in which we function as a coordinated team, despite the distance between staff locations. It will be important to keep that foundation after the transition, even as we divide our work between the three major ITN academic institutions. It’s also worth noting that NIAID remains committed to the success of the ITN, and under a Cooperative Agreement mechanism will play an increasingly integrated part in our planning and operations.