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FY 2005 Budget in BriefNational Institutes of HealthOn this page: Overview by Institute
Overview by Mechanism
Major advances in knowledge about life sciences, especially the sequencing of the human genome, are opening dramatic new opportunities for biomedical research and heretofore un-imagined prospects for preventing, treating, and curing disease and disability. Investment in biomedical research by NIH has driven these advances, and the FY 2005 budget request seeks to capitalize on the resulting opportunities to improve the health of the nation. Building on the research momentum generated by the fulfillment of the President's commitment to complete the five year doubling of the NIH budget, the FY 2005 request provides $28.8 billion for NIH. This is an increase of $764 million, or 2.7 percent, over the FY 2004 level. These funds will support a record total of nearly 40,000 research project grants in FY 2005, including an estimated 10,393 new and competing awards, an increase of 258 over FY 2004. NIH is the world's largest and most distinguished organization dedicated to maintaining and improving health through medical science. Its budget is composed of 27 appropriations for its Institutes and Centers, Office of the Director, and Buildings and Facilities. In FY 2005, nearly 85 percent of the funds appropriated to NIH will flow out to the extramural community, which supports work by more than 212,000 research personnel affiliated with about 2,800 university, hospital, and other research facilities. About 11 percent of the budget will support an in-house, or intramural, program of basic and clinical research activities managed by world-class physicians and scientists. This intramural research program, which includes the NIH Clinical Center, gives our nation the unparalleled ability to respond immediately to health challenges nationally and worldwide. Another 4 percent will provide for research management and support. Research Priorities in FY 2005 In fulfilling its mission, NIH strives to maintain a diverse portfolio of research founded on both public health need and scientific opportunity. The FY 2005 budget request will allow NIH to address imperative requirements in biodefense; implement the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research; pursue an obesity research initiative; and manage a research initiative on developing nuclear and radiological threat countermeasures. Additional support will be provided to continue progress in promising arenas of science related to specific diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease; while also pursuing whole new avenues of post-genomics research. Biodefense: For FY 2005, the President's budget proposes a total of $1.7 billion for NIH biodefense efforts, an increase of $121 million, or 7.5 percent, over FY 2004. Our nation's ability to detect and counter bioterrorism ultimately depends heavily on the state of biomedical science. Guided by its long-range strategic plan that includes short-, intermediate-, and long-term goals, NIH's biodefense research stresses two overarching, complementary, and urgent components: a) basic research on the biology of microbial agents with bioterrorism potential and the properties of the host's response to infection and defense mechanisms; and b) applied research with predetermined milestones for the development of new or improved diagnostics, vaccines, and therapies. NIH will continue to ensure full coordination of these research activities with other Federal agencies in the war against terrorism. In just the past two years, NIH has made tremendous strides towards developing countermeasures to protect all Americans from bioterrorism. For example, researchers supported by NIH have sequenced genomes representative of all bacteria considered bioterrorism threats, and are sequencing genomes for at least one strain of every potential viral and protozoal bioterrorism pathogen. NIH has also developed and expanded contracts to screen new drugs; develop new animal models; establish a reagent and specimen repository; and provide researchers with genomic, proteomic and bioinformatic resources related to potential bioterrorism agents. NIH is funding more than 100 grants and contracts with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in collaborative projects to develop high-priority biodefense products. Work on a second-generation anthrax vaccine has rapidly progressed to the point that a vaccine product is expected to be ready for procurement later this year through the new DHS BioShield program. In FY 2005, NIH will complete the national network of extramural
Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging
Infectious Diseases Research, including awarding the last two of
the planned 10 regional centers. Also in FY 2005, NIH will
continue testing a range of candidate vaccines in clinical and
pre-clinical studies, including third-generation vaccines against
smallpox; a DNA vaccine to prevent Ebola virus; and new vaccines
for plague, tularemia, Rift Valley Fever, and other viral
hemorrhagic fevers, such as Marburg and Lassa viruses. The ability to mitigate the health effects of radiation exposure in the potential event of the use of a limited nuclear or radiological device in a terrorist attack presents a critical challenge for which little progress has been made in the last 40 years. The FY 2005 biodefense request for NIH includes $47 million for the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund to support specific targeted research activities needed to develop medical countermeasures to more rapidly and effectively treat nuclear or radiological injuries. This research initiative will focus on a) developing drugs that can be used to prevent injury from radiological exposure; b) improving methods for measuring radiological exposure and contamination; and c) developing methods or drugs to restore injured tissues and eliminate radioactive materials from contaminated tissues. NIH Roadmap for Medical Research: In an effort to target major opportunities and gaps in biomedical research that no single institute at NIH could tackle alone, the FY 2005 budget allocates a total of $237 million for the "Roadmap" initiative, an increase of $109 million over FY 2004. The request includes $60 million in the Office of the Director, an increase of $25 million, and $177 million, an increase of $84 million, in the budgets of the Institutes and Centers and used in a coordinated effort to support the Roadmap. The Roadmap will help transform new scientific knowledge that will result in tangible benefits for the American public of new treatments, prevention strategies, and diagnostics through overcoming barriers to rapid progress in biomedical research. The Roadmap is organized into three core themes: New Pathways to Discovery; Research Teams of the Future; and Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise. HIV/AIDS Research: The FY 2005 budget includes a total of $2.9 billion for HIV/AIDS-related research. This is an increase of $80 million, or 2.8 percent over the FY 2004 level. In addition to these funds, the FY 2005 budget includes $100 million in NIAID to continue HHS contributions provided since FY 2002 to the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The FY 2005 NIH HIV/AIDS research agenda continues the following overarching themes: HIV prevention research, including development of vaccines, microbicides, behavioral interventions, and strategies to prevent perinatal transmissions; therapeutics research to develop simpler, less toxic, and cheaper drugs and regimens to treat HIV infection and its complications; international research, particularly to address the critical research and training needs in developing countries; and research targeting the disproportionate impact of the AIDS epidemic on racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States. All of these efforts require a strong foundation in basic science. NIH research has heavily informed the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. NIH research proved the safety and efficacy of a drug regimen for preventing transmission of HIV from an infected mother to her newborn that is more affordable and practical than any other course of therapy examined to date. The NIH-sponsored study demonstrated that a single oral dose of the antiretroviral drug, nevirapine, given to an HIV-infected woman in labor and another dose given to her baby within three days of birth reduced the transmission rate by about half compared with a course of AZT given only during labor and delivery. Additional data from this study demonstrated the continued benefit and safety of nevirapine in reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV up to 18 months, even in a breastfeeding population. Obesity: The epidemic of obesity threatens the Nation's health by sharply increasing the incidence of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, kidney failure, and cardiovascular and other diseases. However, dramatic advances in our understanding of how appetite and weight are regulated offer new opportunities to develop methods to treat obesity and to prevent type 2 diabetes and other obesity-related diseases. In FY 2005, NIH plans to expand its obesity research portfolio by $40 million, for a total of $440 million. This includes a targeted, $22 million, trans-NIH initiative that will seek to better understand the neurobiological, genetic, behavioral, and environmental basis of obesity and its co-morbid conditions; improve strategies for maintaining healthy weight in adults and children, particularly in primary care, school, and workplace settings; and develop new therapeutic anti-obesity modalities to complement lifestyle interventions. This obesity initiative will complement the ongoing work of NIH on diabetes, including, for example, efforts to build upon the Secretary's Diabetes Detection Initiative by discovering new approaches to accurately and effectively diagnose type 2 diabetes; and moving forward with a full-scale, landmark, clinical trial to test the best approaches to lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke in adults with type 2 diabetes. Research Project Grants The support of basic medical research through competitive, peer-reviewed, and investigator-initiated research project grants (RPGs) represents 54 percent of NIH's total budget request for FY 2005. In FY 2005, the NIH budget provides $15.5 billion, a 2.7 percent increase over FY 2004, to fund 39,986 total projects, the highest level in the agency's history. This is 558 more grants in total than are expected to be funded in FY 2004. Within this total, NIH estimates it will support 10,393 competing RPGs in FY 2005, an increase of 258 over FY 2004. The average cost of research project grants will increase in the aggregate by 1.3 percent. Facilities Construction During FY 2004, both the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center and part of the John E. Porter National Neurosciences Research Center are scheduled to open, which together will provide an additional 1,115 gross square feet of laboratory and patient research space to NIH's main campus in Bethesda, Maryland. These two new major research assets have been designed and will be managed specifically to allow the NIH Institutes and Centers to work more collaboratively to speed the pace of fundamental discoveries and their translation into effective therapies and prevention strategies. In addition, over the past two years, approximately $800 million has been appropriated for both intramural and extramural biosafety laboratory construction which are currently in design stages. In FY 2005, as discussed above, another $150 million is requested to further expand laboratory space in universities and research institutions around the country critical to biodefense research activities. The budget also includes a total of $108 million for other non-biodefense intramural facilities projects, such as general repairs and improvements across NIH's nearly 200 total buildings. No funds are requested for non-biodefense extramural research facilities construction grants. Over the past 10 years, $633 million have been appropriated for non-biodefense extramural construction projects. In FY 2005, NIH's budget places a higher priority on the support of additional research project grants. |
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Last revised: March 1, 2004
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