Hughes Tosses Lifeline to 90 Eastern European

摘要

In 1988, after 12 years of strenuous effort, Russian neurobiologist Pavel Balaban achieved a major breakthrough—although some might call it a breakout. Balaban had been trying to get an exit visa to attend scientific conferences and to visit labs abroad, but the Soviet government repeatedly turned him down. Finally Balaban managed to break loose for a 6-month stint at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It saved his career: "That's why I and my colleagues are still in science," he says. Back in cash-strapped Russia, collaborative projects with U.S. scientists that grew out of his trip have kept funds flowing into Balaban's lab at Moscow's Institute of Higher Nervous Ac-, tivity and Neurophysiology. Now Balaban is about to catch another lifeline from across the Atlantic. Next week the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in the United States will unveil a program to support outstanding biomedical scientists in Russia and Eastern Europe. Balaban is one of 90 scientists to win awards of $25,000 to $35,000 a year for 5 years. The grants are intended to maintain islands of world-class science in 10 countries hard pressed these days to support any science at all (see table). "The grants give us a chance to do good science and not be forced to leave our country," says Jiri Forejt, one of five grantees at Prague's Institute of Molecular Genetics in the Czech Republic.