NIH

American federal medical research agency at Bethesda in Maryland, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, whose origins go back to a laboratory of 1887 and which is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. Made up of institutes and centres including the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Library of Medicine, it funds external research through grants, carries out its own intramural research and runs the NIH Clinical Center research hospital.