As I covered in the latest issue of FierceBioResearcher, the National Institutes of Health is pushing a new consortium of academic research centers that is intended to coax scientists to work more collaboratively and speed their work into new products. In six years annual NIH funding will hit $500 million. That's a powerful incentive for the lone scientists who traditionally have kept their research under wraps to open up to the greater world. Academic research has been booming in recent years as more and more institutions enhance their reputations and their budgets with ground-breaking scientific projects in disease. This is the seed work that will push new programs at biotech companies, and the NIH is right to use its financial clout to gain wider cooperation in the field. New work in genomics alone will pay off much more quickly if this funding program is a success. It's good to see that the NIH is thinking creatively.- John Carroll