The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) today released a widely anticipated plan to improve its system for peer reviewing grant proposals. The plan generally follows the recommendations of two advisory committees, including shortening the grant application. But NIH rejected a more radical suggestion aimed at eliminating an apparent bias toward researchers who resubmit their grant applications. Instead, NIH will try other ways to fund the best ideas quickly.

This year, the US National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) celebrates its 60th anniversary. A "Diamond Anniversary" presents an ideal opportunity for a government agency to reflect on its past accomplishments, and the NIDCR certainly has much to showcase—from its prominent role in providing the scientific foundation for prevention to greatly expanding our fundamental understanding of oral health and biology. In this anniversary editorial, however, we would like to address a larger question that looms on the horizon: How can oral health research and our traditional research community best position itself for the future? The next generation of technological innovation will soon be upon us, from the maturation of labs-on-a-chip, pharmacogenomics, nanotechnology, molecular imaging, and tissue engineering to the development of systems and computational biology. This emerging wave of scientific and technological advances will accelerate the development of molecular-based oral care, a change that has been en route for the past decade and which will likely dominate future NIDCR accomplishments and anniversaries.

NIH launches programme to help patients with undiagnosed conditions.