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A look inside NIH: the largest clinical research hospital in the country

Posted at 3:22 PM, Oct 12, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-12 15:23:31-04

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest clinical research hospital in the country. It’s a government run medical research agency, and about 7,000 scientists work in its research laboratories looking for new ways to improve health and save lives.

Next year, more than $39 billion in taxpayer dollars will be spent here to find treatments and cures for the biggest health issues in the country, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Right now, there are about 1,600 research studies in progress.

Dr. Larissa Korde is part of one of those studies, working to help find the latest breakthrough in breast cancer.

She says the work done at NIH has a proven track record.

“Women with her2 positive breast cancer now have numerous effective therapies and tend to live longer than they did before those drugs were evaluated and came to the market,” Dr. Korde explains. “And our research has been involved all along the way.”               

With each new study, doctors continue to learn more and hope the next discovery will help save more lives.