May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Francis S. Collins, the scientist who led the U.S. government drive to map the human genetic code, is the top candidate to run the National Institutes of Health, a person familiar with the selection process said.

Screening for Collins is almost finished, and President Barack Obama may announce his choice as early as next week, the person said yesterday. Collins, 59, would head an agency that Obama has made key to his plans for reviving the U.S. economy and overhauling health care. The 27 institutes and centers under the NIH umbrella employ more than 18,000 people and fund research at thousands of universities and medical schools.

The former head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, a member agency, Collins became a driving force in the race to catalogue the 3 billion letters of the human genetic code. As director of the institutes, Collins will face calls to boost spending on cancer research and free science from politics as well as financial conflicts of interest.

“NIH is a huge enterprise, and I think Francis has very good experience with getting the best out of a huge enterprise from what he did in the genome project,” said David Baltimore, a biology professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine, in a telephone interview in February. “He’s also very well liked in Congress.”

‘Restore Science’

The economic stimulus package that Obama signed into law Feb. 17 adds $10 billion in research funding for the institutes through 2010, expanding a budget that has averaged $29 billion a year since 2005.

Collins didn’t immediately respond to efforts to reach him through personal e-mail, a home number and the genome institute. The White House declined to comment.

A study last year by the University of California at Los Angeles and five other institutions found that the real purchasing power of the institutes had declined 13 percent since 2003.

The measure also designates the institutes, based in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, to conduct research comparing drugs and medical devices for their effectiveness, part of an effort to bring down health-care costs.

Obama pledged at his swearing-in on Jan. 20 to “restore science to its rightful place” in government programs.

Collins will need to deal effectively “with the conflict- of-interest issues that have swirled around the NIH for the last few years,” Baltimore said. “He needs to be firm about what is acceptable and unacceptable, but needs to give staff flexibility to interact productively with for-profit organizations.”

Ethics Rules

After inquiries by government investigators, the former head of the institutes, Elias A. Zerhouni, stiffened ethics rules in 2005, banning its staff scientists from consulting work in the drug and chemical industries. He also made about 6,000 scientists subject to financial reviews to look for possible conflicts. Zerhouni, who had served since 2002, resigned last year. Raynard S. Kington, deputy director starting in 2003, was named acting director on Oct. 31.

Collins has “done things many scientists wish they could do once in their lifetime, and he’s done it repeatedly” Zerhouni said in a telephone interview. Collins is a “terrific communicator” with a knack for making complex science accessible to the public, a useful skill when making funding appeals to Congress.

Gene Mapping

A physician with a Yale University doctorate in chemistry, Collins helped, in 1989, isolate the gene linked to cystic fibrosis. In 1993, he helped pinpoint the gene for Huntington’s disease, a brain disorder. That same year, he joined the government’s genome research institute, taking over the Human Genome Project, which had begun in 1990.

With the mapping of the human genome, completed in April 2003 at a cost of $2.7 billion, researchers suddenly could delve into individual patients’ genes to search for variations linked to common inherited diseases, including breast cancer. That work led to the development of new drugs, such as Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s Velcade as well as Roche Holding AG and OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Tarceva, both for cancer.

The race to map the genome pitted Collins and his team against a rival private company, Celera Genomics Group, led by J. Craig Venter. The two called a truce and in 2000 were given equal recognition by then-President Bill Clinton.

Collins was less successful in a global race to identify the first inherited gene known to cause breast cancer. He and research partner Mary-Claire King, now at the University of Washington, lost to Myriad Genetics Inc., a Salt Lake City company that now sells a diagnostic test.

Science and Religion

“The study of the human genome has completely transformed medical research and is on the way to transforming clinical practice,” Collins said in May, when he announced he would step down as head of the genome institute.

Collins grew up on a small farm in rural Virginia and was educated at home until the sixth grade. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, in 1970. He received his Yale doctorate in 1974 and a medical degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1977.

A guitar player known to be fond of motorcycles, Collins is also a one-time atheist who wrote a book in 2006 about his Christian beliefs. He took the title, “The Language of God,” from comments Clinton made at a 2000 ceremony, “we are learning the language in which God created life.”

“God is most certainly not threatened by science,” Collins wrote in the book. “He made it all possible.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 23, 2009 00:01 EDT