ABSTRACT
At the heart of the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, MD, stands the NIH Clinical Center, a research hospital combined with laboratories to conduct clinical studies for development of drugs and biopharmaceuticals. Patients come from all over the nation — and, in some cases, from all corners of the world — to participate in clinical trials. Other hospitals do research, but one half of the beds in the NIH Clinical Center are reserved for research studies. It serves as an international model of collaborative excellence and innovation in clinical research. It provides an ideal environment for elucidating the knowledge that will help prevent, diagnose, and treat disease and disability and for developing new drugs and biologics to cure the rarest genetic disorders, cancers, and cardiovascular disease.
