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FY 2006 Budget in BriefNational Institutes of HealthOn this page: Overview Table by Institute
Overview Table by Mechanism
The National Institutes of Health uncover new knowledge that will lead to better health for everyone. 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 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has driven these advances, and the FY 2006 budget request of $28.8 billion seeks to capitalize on the resulting opportunities to improve the health of the nation. 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 2006, nearly 84 percent of the funds appropriated to NIH will flow out to the extramural community, which supports work by more than 200,000 research personnel affiliated with approximately 3,000 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 5 percent will provide for research management and support. Research Priorities in FY 2006In fulfilling its mission, NIH strives to maintain a diverse portfolio of research founded on both public health need and scientific opportunity. The FY 2006 budget request will allow NIH to address imperative requirements in biodefense; continue to implement the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research; accelerate neuroscience research through enhanced intra-agency collaborations under the NIH Neuroscience Blueprint; and manage a research initiative on developing chemical threat countermeasures. Additional support will be provided to continue progress in promising arenas of science related to specific diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease, while also pursuing whole new avenues of post-genomics research.
Biodefense: For FY 2006, the President's Budget proposes a total of $1.8 billion for NIH biodefense efforts, a net increase of $56 million, or 3.2 percent, over FY 2005. When adjusted for non-recurring extramural facilities construction in FY 2005, research activities in the NIH biodefense program will increase by $175 million, or 11 percent. Of the $1.8 billion total, $1.7 billion is included within the NIH appropriations accounts, and $97 million is budgeted in the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund (PHSSEF) for support of targeted research activities to develop countermeasures against nuclear, radiological, and chemical threats. 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, biodefense research supported by NIH 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 needed to control a bioterrorist-caused outbreak. NIH will continue to ensure full coordination of these research activities with other Federal agencies in the war against terrorism. In just the past three years, NIH has made tremendous strides towards developing countermeasures to protect all Americans from bioterrorism. For example, researchers supported by NIH have completed the genomic sequencing of at least one strain of all Category A, B, and C agents considered bioterrorism threats. In the area of diagnostics, NIH researchers have developed a rapid test for the presence of antibodies to smallpox that is five-to-ten times more sensitive than standard techniques. An assay has also been developed to simultaneously detect three priority Category A agents, anthrax, plague, and tularemia, in a single sample. Human Phase I trials are being conducted for a DNA vaccine against Ebola, and work is underway on other vaccine candidates against botulism, tularemia, and plague. 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 almost 150 grants and contracts with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in collaborative projects to develop high-priority biodefense products. Biodefense research priorities in FY 2006 include continuing the clinical development of vaccines for plague, tularemia, Valley Fever, Ebola, and botulism. NIH will also develop clinical studies of anti-toxin/antibody treatment for anthrax, and, in partnerships with industry and academia, accelerate preclinical development of other promising medical countermeasures, with a focus on therapies. Research will address the need for protection against both naturally occurring threats and ones arising from the risk that biotechnology advances could be used to engineer or modify organisms to evade current medical countermeasures or enhance their virulence. The FY 2006 budget also requests $30 million to continue support for construction of specialized biosafety laboratories at universities and institutions across the country that are needed to conduct research on the highly dangerous and infectious pathogens in the biodefense research field. Prior to FY 2002, only a few of these specialized laboratories existed in the United States. With these FY 2006 funds, NIH will have spent over $551 million since FY 2003 on extramural biodefense construction. The $30 million investment in FY 2006 will fund an additional Regional Biocontainment Laboratory to support extramural investigators within a region or metropolitan area, bringing the total number of National and Regional Biocontainment Laboratories to 18. Also, these funds will support the construction or renovation of up to six smaller, local-level laboratories to Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) standards. Once these facilities are completed, NIH will be able to support over 200 research projects at the same time aimed at developing medical protection from bioterrorism. The national and regional facilities will also back up State and Federal public health laboratories if there is an actual or suspected bioterrorism attack, or when naturally occurring diseases unexpectedly emerge or re-emerge, such as avian influenza and SARS. With the $97 million budgeted in the PHSSEF for NIH in FY 2006, NIH will use $47 million to continue the nuclear/radiological research effort begun in FY 2005 to improve methods for measuring radiological exposure and contamination, develop drugs to prevent injury from radiological exposure, and develop methods or drugs to restore injured tissues and eliminate radioactive materials from contaminated tissues. The other $50 million will be used to support an initiative on developing new medical countermeasures for chemicals that can be used as weapons of mass destruction. NIH Roadmap for Medical Research: The FY 2006 budget allocates a total of $333 million, an increase of $98 million over FY 2005, to continue support for the NIH "Roadmap" initiative in accordance with the strategic plan developed in September 2003. These funds will be used to target major opportunities and gaps in biomedical research that no single institute at NIH could tackle alone, but which the agency as a whole must address in order to overcome barriers and rapidly develop new disease treatments, prevention strategies, and diagnostics. The Roadmap is organized into three core themes: New Pathways to Discovery; Research Teams of the Future; and Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise. The FY 2006 request includes $83 million, an increase of $23.5 million, in the Office of the Director, and $250 million, an increase of $74 million, in the budgets of the Institutes and Centers for use in a coordinated effort to support the Roadmap. HIV/AIDS Research: The FY 2006 budget includes a total of $2.9 billion for HIV/AIDS-related research. This is a net increase of $12 million, or 0.4 percent over FY 2005. In addition to these funds, the FY 2006 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. In FY 2006, the NIH HIV/AIDS research program is placing its highest priority on the goal to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine. This includes programs focused on the discovery, development, and pre-clinical and clinical testing of vaccine candidates. The evaluation of an HIV/AIDS vaccine will require extensive testing in the United States and in international settings. An integral component of this effort is the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise initiative, which was announced by the President at the G-8 Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, in June 2004. The Enterprise will support a virtual consortium of research organizations around the world to accelerate HIV vaccine development by enhancing coordination, information sharing, and collaboration globally. In FY 2006, NIH will devote $49 million, an increase of $34 million over FY 2005, for the second year of this initiative. In the United States, these funds will support the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology that will focus on intensive and highly collaborative projects addressing key immunological roadblocks to the discovery and development of a safe and effective HIV/AIDS vaccine. Other key components of the NIH HIV/AIDS research agenda continue to be HIV prevention research, including the development of 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. NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research: In FY 2006, NIH will continue to implement its "Neuroscience Blueprint" that is serving as a framework to enhance the effectiveness of the NIH neurosciences research agenda, which is supported by 15 Institutes and Centers. Advances in the neurosciences and the emergence of powerful new technologies offer many opportunities for Blueprint activities that will enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of neuroscience research. Over the past decade, driven by the science, the NIH neuroscience Institutes and Centers have increasingly joined forces through initiatives and working groups focused on specific disorders. The Blueprint builds on this foundation, making collaboration a day-to-day part of how the NIH does business in neuroscience. By pooling resources and expertise, the Blueprint can take advantage of economies of scale, confront challenges too large for any single Institute, and develop research tools and infrastructure that will serve the entire neuroscience community. In FY 2005, participating Blueprint Institutes and Centers are developing an inventory of neuroscience tools funded by NIH and other government agencies, enhancing training in the neurobiology of disease for basic neuroscientists, and expanding ongoing gene expression database efforts, such as the Gene Expression Nervous System Atlas (GENSAT). In FY 2006, NIH will invest an additional $26 million on Blueprint initiatives that include developing genetically engineered mouse strains specifically for nervous system disease research; training in critical cross-cutting areas such as neuroimaging and computational biology; and supporting specialized, interdisciplinary "core" centers that might focus on areas such as animal models, cell culture, computer modeling, DNA sequencing, drug screening, gene vectors, imaging, microarrays, molecular biology, or proteomics and their applications to neuroscience research. Research Project GrantsThe support of basic medical research through competitive, peer-reviewed, and investigator-initiated research project grants (RPGs) represents 54 percent of the total NIH budget request for FY 2006. In FY 2006, the NIH budget provides an estimated $15.5 billion, a 0.4 percent increase over FY 2005, to fund approximately 38,746 total projects. This is 402 fewer grants in total than are expected to be funded in FY 2005. The FY 2006 budget focuses available resources on funding programmatic increases in non-competing continuation grants to which NIH had previously committed, and to maximizing the number of competing RPGs, in lieu of providing inflationary adjustments. Within the total number of grants, NIH estimates it will support 9,463 competing RPGs in FY 2006, an increase of about 247 over FY 2005. Excluding the large cohort of HIV/AIDS clinical trials that are cycling into competing status in FY 2006, the average cost of a competing research project grant in FY 2006 will be about $347 thousand, approximately the same level as in FY 2005.
Facilities ConstructionIn FY 2006, as discussed above, another $30 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 $90 million for other non-biodefense intramural facilities projects, such as general repairs and improvements across the NIH campuses. Consistent throughout HHS, FY 2006 budget requests for intramural facilities focus on maintenance of existing facilities. Management InnovationsTo better integrate research across its 27 Institutes and Centers, NIH is developing additional decision support tools to improve the management of its large and complex scientific portfolio. This will allow NIH to more efficiently address important areas of emerging scientific opportunities and rising public health challenges. This effort is intended to stimulate accelerated investments in research involving multiple Institutes and Centers, thereby helping to improve the nation's health. |
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Last revised: March 31, 2005
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