The LAMHDI project (http://lamhdi.org) held its second invitation-only Animal Models and Human Disease Conference August 17–19 in Bethesda. A total of 23 scientists from universities across the country, NIH project officers from several Institutes and Centers, and TCG staff discussed ways the LAMHDI resource could be made even more useful to human-disease researchers. Future work will include adding visualization and beefing up communication, focusing on infectious diseases, neuroscience, and drug development.

LAMHDI, the initiative to Link Animal Models to Human Disease, is a project of the NIH’s National Center for Research Resources under contract number HHSN268200800014C. It allows researchers to find appropriate animal models with a single search across five species: mice, zebrafish, rats, yeast, and flies. Other species are being added regularly. The site also offers a search of PrimateLit, the database of literature about non-human primates, as it relates to non-human primate models of human disease.