Leading Academic Research Institutions Seek Increased NIH Funding

Abstract

Five consecutive years of flat funding the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is deterring promising young researchers and threatening the future of Americans' health, a group of seven preeminent academic research institutions warn. In a March 11 report entitled “A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk,” a group of 6 research universities and a major teaching hospital describe the toll that cumulative stagnant NIH funding is taking on the American medical research enterprise. The institutions warn that if NIH does not get consistent and robust support in the future, the nation will lose a generation of young investigators to other careers and other countries and, with them, “a generation of promising research that could cure disease for millions for whom no cure currently exists.” The report was co-authored by Brown University, Duke University, Harvard University, The Ohio State University, Partners Healthcare, the University of California Los Angeles, and Vanderbilt University. The “Broken Pipeline” focuses on the effect that recurring flat funding is having on young researchers in particular. However, it notes that competition for limited resources is affecting scientists at every point of the academic research pipeline. According to the 20-page report, fewer resources means that NIH is experiencing a backlog in high-quality research proposals, and too few are getting funded. The overall success rate for NIH research project grants dropped from 32% in 1999 to 24% in 2007. Only about 1 in 4 original research applications to the NIH is being funded, and many of those are only partially funded, and only after lengthy delays and cumbersome reapplications, the report says, noting that “today's researchers are waiting an average of four years longer than they did in 1990 for their first big grant.” Although the success rate has dropped for all R01 applicants, it is particularly low—only 18%—for first-time applicants. First-time R01 recipients also are older. The average age is now 43, up from 39 years in 1990. (R01s are the premier NIH research grants needed to establish a researcher's credibility and independence.) “Without effective national policies to recruit young scientists to the field, and support their research over the long term, in 10 to 15 years, we'll have more scientists older than 65 than those younger than 35. This is not a sustainable trend in biomedical research and must be addressed aggressively,” says Dr Elias A. Zerhouni, Director of the NIH. For more details, see “A Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk,” available from: www.brokenpipeline.org.