NIH Budget Research Articles

Doubling Down: Will Large Increases in the NIH Budget Promote More Meaningful Medical Innovation?

Kesselheim proposes doubling the NIH's budget to promote clinically meaningful pharmaceutical innovation. Since the effects of a previous doubling (from 1998-2003) were mixed, I argue that policymakers should couple future budget growth with investments in experimentation and evaluation.

GENOMIC POLITICS AND EQUALITY

GENOMIC POLITICS AND EQUALITY

The future of health professions education: Emerging trends in the United States.

The future of health professions education: Emerging trends in the United States.

Expansion fever and soft money plague the biomedical research enterprise

Academic biomedical science has had both a long boom in its funding and a subsequent scary bust. From 1970 to 1999, NIH budgets increased 9% per year (1); from 2000 to 2004, they doubled (2, 3). In 2005 came the unmistakable bust: flat-lined NIH budgets converted the doubling into a paltry 14% increase in inflation-corrected (4) dollars over 16 years (1999–2015; Fig. 1 A ). But during the bust, two stealthier dangers escaped notice, their quantitative details and significance masked or denied. Universities recklessly overbuilt laboratories to fill with more scientists, just when the bust removed funding increases they needed to do science. As diminished NIH dollars made research riskier, universities required principal investigators (PIs) to earn high proportions of salary from grants, transferring much of the risk to PIs: Universities in the 1970s paid PIs about 75% “hard” salary from their own coffers; those coffers in the 21st century pay PIs much less, forcing them to corral most salary as “soft” grant money. Universities have recklessly overbuilt laboratories to fill with more scientists, just when lower funding from NIH eliminated the increases they needed to conduct science. Image courtesy of Dave Cutler. As responses to specific circumstances, expansion and soft money seemed innocuous during boom decades, when increasing federal grants and indirect cost recovery (ICR) allowed expansion to pay for itself. Then flat-lined NIH budgets after 2004 turned formerly prudent policies into grave dangers, allowing stagnant funding to combine with ever-expanding research facilities and reliance on soft-money salary to corrode job security and opportunities for academic biomedical scientists. Although external funds remain scarce, research universities must act to protect science from soft money and expansion, both of which they control directly. Can academic institutions rescue biomedical research and the next generation of investigators? Yes, but the task will be hard … [↵][1]1Email: hrbourne{at}gmail.com. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

A Foundation Funding Frontier

A Foundation Funding Frontier

Contribution of NIH funding to new drug approvals 2010–2016

This work examines the contribution of NIH funding to published research associated with 210 new molecular entities (NMEs) approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010-2016. We identified >2 million publications in PubMed related to the 210 NMEs (n = 131,092) or their 151 known biological targets (n = 1,966,281). Of these, >600,000 (29%) were associated with NIH-funded projects in RePORTER. This funding included >200,000 fiscal years of NIH project support (1985-2016) and project costs >$100 billion (2000-2016), representing ∼20% of the NIH budget over this period. NIH funding contributed to every one of the NMEs approved from 2010-2016 and was focused primarily on the drug targets rather than on the NMEs themselves. There were 84 first-in-class products approved in this interval, associated with >$64 billion of NIH-funded projects. The percentage of fiscal years of project funding identified through target searches, but not drug searches, was greater for NMEs discovered through targeted screening than through phenotypic methods (95% versus 82%). For targeted NMEs, funding related to targets preceded funding related to the NMEs, consistent with the expectation that basic research provides validated targets for targeted screening. This analysis, which captures basic research on biological targets as well as applied research on NMEs, suggests that the NIH contribution to research associated with new drug approvals is greater than previously appreciated and highlights the risk of reducing federal funding for basic biomedical research.

NIH support of mobile, imaging, pervasive sensing, social media and location tracking (MISST) research: laying the foundation to examine research ethics in the digital age

Mobile Imaging, pervasive Sensing, Social media and location Tracking (MISST) tools used in research are raising new ethical challenges for scientists and the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) charged with protecting human participants. Yet, little guidance exists to inform the ethical design and the IRB’s regulatory review of MISST research. MISST tools/methods produce personal health data that is voluminous and granular and, which may not be subject to policies like the Health Information Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA). The NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORTER) database was used to identify the number, nature and scope of MISST-related studies supported by the NIH at three time points: 2005, 2010 and 2015. The goal was to: 1-examine the extent to which the NIH is supporting this research and, 2-identify how these tools are being used in research. The number of funded MISST research projects increased 384% from 2005 to 2015. Results revealed that while funding of MISST research is growing, it only represented about 1% of the total NIH budget in 2015. However, the number of institutes, agencies, and centers supporting MISST research increased by roughly 50%. Additionally, the scope of MISST research is diverse ranging from use of social media to track disease transmission to personalized interventions delivered through mobile health applications. Given that MISST research represents about 1% of the NIH budget and is on an increasing upward trajectory, support for research that can inform the ethical, legal and social issues associated with this research is critical.

The Next Generation Researchers Initiative at NIH

Growing concerns about the wellbeing and stability of the biomedical research workforce are well documented. Over the last 15 years (since the end of the doubling of the NIH budget), we have observed worsening “hypercompetition” as more scientists vie for fewer available dollars (1, 2). Within this hypercompetitive environment, the research workforce is growing older at a rate that is disproportionate to the general American labor force (3). Late-career investigators have been awarded a greater proportion of available research funding, raising concerns that early-career investigators risk being crowded out of the workforce before they have a chance to launch independent scientific careers (3). Other analysts have suggested that adverse effects are also being felt by midcareer investigators (4); large numbers of meritorious investigators may achieve research independence only to lose it because they are unable to renew their one grant or obtain a second new grant. Fig. 1. The NIH hopes its latest initiative will improve the grant-funding prospects for early- and midcareer investigators. Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Stephen_Payne. In our latest effort to tackle this problem, the NIH is launching the “Next Generation Researchers Initiative,” first announced in June. We believe this initiative will help ameliorate these difficult issues in a direct data-driven manner (5) by taking substantive steps to increase funding opportunities for early- and midcareer investigators. It is not entirely clear why early- and midcareer investigators are disproportionately affected by hypercompetition. Some worry about a review bias that favors more-experienced and better-known researchers (5), making it easier for them to get their applications favorably received at peer review. Others have suggested a resiliency factor (4): experienced, well-networked scientists may hold more than one grant or have access to greater sums of grant and private money, making it easier for them to weather the effects of rejected applications. Regardless of … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: Michael.Lauer{at}nih.gov. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

ATVB Named Lecture Review-Insight Into Author: Edward A. Fisher.

ATVB Named Lecture Reviews–2013 George Lyman Duff Memorial Lecture Insight Into the Author: Edward A. Fisher, MD, MPH, PhD, Department of Medicine (Cardiology), the Marc and Ruti Bell Program in Vascular Biology, and the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, New York University School of Medicine Neither of my parents had anything to do with science. My father worked in a pawnshop, and my mother had a vocational high school diploma in sewing. I think my initial interest in science was pretty much instinctive: isn’t everyone curious as a child? This was reinforced by excellent science teachers in the New York City public school system, especially at my high school, the Bronx High School of Science. My parents worked hard to give my brother and me educational opportunities they never had, and it turns out we both used these to become scientists, he a physical chemist. Why I chose metabolism as a field is based in part from my clinical experiences when I was a pediatrics resident at Duke. We had a chief of metabolism, Jim Sidbury, who was very inspiring. We talked at length about some of the patients with metabolic disorders, and he encouraged me to get the hard science training needed to understand biochemical mechanisms, to make more accurate diagnoses, and to improve treatments. He also pointed me to a joint graduate program at MIT and the Harvard-affiliated hospitals in metabolism, and in one of my first year courses, I attended a lecture by Jan Breslow on lipoproteins, which led to my joining his lab. I already mentioned two mentors, Jim Sidbury and Jan Breslow, who also became role models as highly successful physician-scientists in the area of metabolic disease. When I became an assistant professor of biochemistry at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, Julian Marsh, …

Dr. Mark A. Wainberg (1945-2017): Provocateur, Activist, and Champion for AIDS Care and Research.

Dr. Mark A. Wainberg (1945-2017): Provocateur, Activist, and Champion for AIDS Care and Research.

Budget Cuts Would Harm Research and Patients.

Cancer researchers and administrators have attacked the Trump administration's proposal to cut the NIH budget by nearly 20%. Researchers say that the reduction could hamstring efforts to expand immunotherapies and other novel treatments to more patients. They also worry that the proposal could drive away biomedical scientists and shift top-notch research to other countries.

Trump’s NIH budget may include reducing overhead payments to universities

Trump’s NIH budget may include reducing overhead payments to universities

Proposed NIH Budget Includes Mandatory Funding

Abstract President Obama has proposed an overall budget increase of $825 million for the NIH in fiscal year 2017 compared with 2016. That money would be reserved for three efforts: the NCI's “moonshot” initiative, the Precision Medicine Initiative cohort program, and the BRAIN program.

Celebrating R and D expenditures badly misses the point

As we in academic health centers are acutely aware, government funding for the biomedical sciences has gotten scarcer in the United States in recent years. The NIH budget peaked in 2010 at $31.2 billion; in 2014, it was $30.15 billion (1). This is concerning.

Personal reflection (RNA journal 20th anniversary).

Personal reflection (RNA journal 20th anniversary).

Financial costs and personal consequences of research misconduct resulting in retracted publications

The number of retracted scientific articles has been increasing. Most retractions are associated with research misconduct, entailing financial costs to funding sources and damage to the careers of those committing misconduct. We sought to calculate the magnitude of these effects. Data relating to retracted manuscripts and authors found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct were reviewed from public databases. Attributable costs of retracted manuscripts, and publication output and funding of researchers found to have committed misconduct were determined. We found that papers retracted due to misconduct accounted for approximately $58 million in direct funding by the NIH between 1992 and 2012, less than 1% of the NIH budget over this period. Each of these articles accounted for a mean of $392,582 in direct costs (SD $423,256). Researchers experienced a median 91.8% decrease in publication output and large declines in funding after censure by the ORI.

Supporting the NIH: the Original Crowdfunding of Medical Research

There is strong support in our society for increased medical research and Americans give generously to private foundations that help fund that research. In this op-ed, I look at how these organizations fit into the national research landscape compared to funding by the NIH and I urge everyone to contact their representatives in Congress since even a small increase in the NIH budget can have a huge impact on research funding that is available to fight disease.

Budget Woes, Sequester Place Researchers in a Bind

With 14 000 federal scientists returning to theNational Institutes ofHealth(NIH)tosalvageresearch disrupted by the recent government shutdown,theyandtheiracademiccolleaguesface newuncertaintiessurroundingwhetherCongress will reach a budget compromise and whether sequester cutswill continue. “It’s a one-twopunch,” saidNIHDirector Francis S. Collins,MD, PhD, in an interview in November.Atpresstime,abipartisandealthat would soften the sequester’s impact for the next 2 yearswas being considered. InMarch2013, the sequesterwent into effect, requiring $85 billion in across-theboardcuts togovernmentagencies.TheNIH wasordered tocut5%of its 2013budget, or $1.55 billion, across all of its activities. As a result, keyprogramshavebeenscaledback. For example, the NIH Clinical Center, which conducts clinical research, is admitting 750 fewer patients in 2013. The cuts are having an even greater effect on scientists outside the agency. Most (approximately 80%) of the NIH budget is used to fund work by more than 300 000 researchers at 2500 universities and other research institutions. Thedecrease inextramural research funding translates into 640 fewer grants and cuts averaging 4.7% from existinggrants.Collinsnoted that sometoptier researchers are finding themselves unable to secure NIH grants. For them, “that’s a 100% cut in funding,” he said.

Reduced funding and sequestration impact young biomedical researchers

The federal sequester has exacerbated an already grim research funding crisis. The continued budget cuts have had a widespread effect on all researchers in biomedical science, but the impact is especially keen on trainees who are deciding whether or not to stay in science. Steps must be taken to bolster young researcher morale, career options and funding to ensure the continued advancement of biomedical science in this country.

How to Personalize Pharmacoproteomics?

Copyright: © 2014 Andreev VP. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Stepping into the elevator this morning, I noticed a familiar yet strange scene: five people staring into their smart phones. To be completely honest, it required some effort not to do the same. Why are we doing this? How many of us really need to check e-mails every two minutes? Is it the modern substitute of cigarettes, a way to feel comfortable in the company of strangers? More interestingly, can we use the same psychosocial phenomenon to achieve something useful and valuable? More specifically, can we make proteomics and pharmacoproteomics “sexy” for millions of people, popularize and personalize it? The question is worth examining, since the price that 150 million [1] smart phone owners in the US pay for data plans solely (which most of us do not really need) is $30 a month, which adds up to $54 billion annually, or nearly twice the total NIH budget (30 billion USD in 2014 [2]).