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FY 2007 Budget in BriefNational Institutes of HealthOn this page: Overview Table by Institute
The National Institutes of Health uncovers new knowledge that will lead to better health for everyone. The Nation’s substantial investment in biomedical research, led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is yielding significant achievements by contributing to dramatic reductions in mortality from heart disease and stroke, declining cancer incidence and death rates, and improving capacity to rapidly control new infectious diseases shortly after they emerge. Major advances in knowledge about life sciences, especially the sequencing of the human genome, are opening dramatic new opportunities for biomedical research and exciting prospects for preventing, treating, and curing disease and disability. To capitalize on these resulting opportunities, the FY 2007 budget requests $28.6 billion for NIH. 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 2007, about 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 five percent will provide for agency leadership and research management and support. Research Priorities in FY 2007In fulfilling its mission, NIH strives to maintain a diverse portfolio of research founded on both public health need and scientific opportunity. The FY 2007 budget request will allow NIH to address requirements in biodefense and pandemic influenza; continue to implement the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research; expand an initiative on the connections between genes, the environment, and health; establish a new program to provide increased support for new research investigators; and expand a newly created program focused on translating clinical research results into clinical practice. Support will also 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 new avenues of postgenomics research. Genes, Environment, and Health: Building on the success of the Human Genome Project and the HapMap project, NIH plans to expand its Genes, Environment, and Health Initiative by $49 million to a total of $68 million in FY 2007. This will be the second year of a multiyear project to accelerate the discovery of major genetic factors that increase the risk of many diseases and disorders with substantial public health impact. The project plans to concentrate on diseases and disorders such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, osteoporosis, asthma, cataracts, hypertension, Parkinson's disease, autism, and obesity. Additionally, this initiative will develop and field test sophisticated new technologies, such as biosensors, to more rapidly assess the connection between diet, physical activity, and environmental exposures to the genetic factors of these illnesses. The ability to identify the impact of specific DNA variations on disease promises to lead to health improvements through more focused preventive medicine, the discovery of new drug targets, and more individualized drug prescribing that can be more effective and help avoid adverse side effects. Biodefense: For FY 2007, the President's Budget proposes a total of $1.9 billion for NIH biodefense efforts, a net increase of $110 million, or 6.2 percent, over FY 2006. 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 to improve public health emergency preparedness. In FY 2007, NIH will create a $160 million fund within the Office of the Director appropriation to devote to the advanced development of biodefense countermeasures that are priority Project BioShield acquisition targets. This represents a comparable $110 million increase over the $50 million included within the FY 2006 base of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for such activities. This initiative will support efforts to work with academia and industry to develop candidate countermeasures from the investigational new drug application stage to the level that these candidate countermeasures could be eligible for acquisition by Project BioShield. The use of NIH funds for this purpose reflects the priority need to expand the Nation’s arsenal of biodefense countermeasures. These funds help fill a gap in this critical stage of countermeasure development which has prolonged the Nation’s exposure to risks from bioterrorist threats. NIH recently supported similar advanced product development programs for next generation anthrax and smallpox vaccines. The FY 2007 request would support the advanced development of other countermeasures, such as a third-generation anthrax vaccine, anthrax therapeutics, and antivirals for smallpox and viral hemorrhagic fevers. Also included in the request for the Office of the Director is $96 million, the same level as in FY 2006, to continue targeted research efforts devoted to developing medical countermeasures against nuclear, radiological, and chemical threats that could be used as weapons of mass destruction. The FY 2007 budget also proposes $25 million, a decrease of $5 million from FY 2006, to continue support for construction and renovation of specialized biosafety laboratories at universities and institutions needed to conduct research on the highly dangerous and infectious pathogens in the biodefense research field. With these FY 2007 funds, NIH will have spent over $576 million since FY 2003 on extramural biodefense construction. The $25 million investment in FY 2007 will be used to construct or renovate additional local-level laboratories to Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) standards, and to provide the capacity to support Good Laboratory Practice research processes at selected sites. Pandemic Influenza: In support of the HHS Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plan, the FY 2007 President's Budget requests $35 million in NIH to expand international and domestic pandemic influenza research, an increase of $17 million over FY 2006. Research activities that will be supported by these funds include: assisting in the development and testing of candidate vaccines and drugs produced by Vietnam and other countries with endemic avian influenza; expanding the clinical trials infrastructure and research in Southeast Asia; conducting human-animal interface studies, including the surveillance of diseases in animals in Southeast Asia to better understand how the virus is transferred; and expanding other research to accelerate the development of pandemic influenza vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. With these funds, total NIH spending on influenza research is expected to grow to $199 million in FY 2007. NIH Roadmap for Medical Research: The FY 2007 budget allocates a total of $443 million, an increase of $113 million, or 34 percent, over FY 2006, 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 accelerate the discovery of 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 2007 request includes $111 million, an increase of $28 million, in the Office of the Director, and $332 million, an increase of $85 million, in the budgets of the Institutes and Centers for use in a coordinated effort to support the Roadmap. The collaborative trans-agency process for developing and implementing the Roadmap represents an enhanced approach to portfolio management, and sets a new standard for responding to emerging needs and scientific opportunities. New Investigators: The engines that drive the research enterprise are talented, creative, and dedicated research personnel. Fulfilling the NIH mission requires that the agency sustain a vibrant workforce, including sufficient numbers of new investigators with new ideas and new skills, especially in interdisciplinary fields of research. To help reverse the trend of increased average age of first-time principal investigators obtaining independent research funding from NIH, the FY 2007 budget includes $15 million to establish a new program to provide increased and stable support for new research investigators. NIH also plans to identify and track the progress toward research independence of all predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers supported by NIH regardless of funding mechanism. Clinical Research Translation: To meet the profound challenges of 21st century medicine and to capitalize on Roadmap initiatives to advance information technology, integrate research networks, stimulate the development of computer-assisted outcome measurement, and improve workforce training, NIH has developed a new Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. The goal of this new effort is to provide the academic home and integrated resources necessary to advance a new intellectual discipline of clinical and translational sciences, create and nurture a cadre of welltrained investigators, and advance the health of the nation by transforming patient observations and basic discovery research into clinical practice. In addition, NIH plans to transition elements of existing clinical research programs, primarily the General Clinical Research Centers in the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), into CTSAs as these programs complete their current funding cycles. In FY 2007, total CTSA funding is estimated to be $361 million, which includes an additional $3 million requested in NCRR for this program.
Research Project GrantsThe $15.1 billion provided in FY 2007 for support of medical research through competitive, peerreviewed, and investigator-initiated research project grants (RPGs) represents 53 percent of the total NIH budget request. NIH estimates it will support 9,337 competing RPGs in FY 2007, an increase of 275 over FY 2006. Excluding the large cohort of HIV/AIDS clinical trials that are cycling into non-competing status in FY 2007, the average cost of a competing research project grant in FY 2007 will be about $350,000, approximately the same level as in FY 2006, as no increases are provided for inflation on grants. The total number of RPGs to be awarded in FY 2007 is expected to be 37,671. This is 656 fewer grants in total than currently estimated for FY 2006. This reduction is due primarily to a large number of non-competing grants that were initiated during the NIH doubling years coming to completion in FY 2006. Enhancing Management and OversightThe FY 2007 budget for the Office of the Director includes $3 million for the new Office of Portfolio Analysis and Strategic Initiatives (OPASI), an increase of $1 million over FY 2006. By FY 2007, OPASI will serve as the center of trans-NIH portfolio management and coordination activities. The mission of OPASI is four-fold: a) to provide NIH and its 27 Institutes and Centers with the methods and information necessary to improve management of their large and complex scientific portfolios; b) to identify - in concert with multiple other inputs - important areas of emerging scientific opportunities or rising public health challenges; c) to assist in accelerating research investments in these areas, focusing on those involving multiple Institutes and Centers; and d) to coordinate and make more effective use of the NIH-wide evaluation process to assess the benefits and impacts of these trans-NIH investments.
Overview Table by Mechanism
By 2010, NIH intends to develop one universal antibiotic effective against multiple classes of biological pathogens. From a strategic perspective, a broad spectrum antimicrobial therapeutic could be used either alone, or in combination with currently available therapeutics, to protect individuals exposed or potentially exposed to unknown pathogens. This would provide a valuable countermeasure in the case of an outbreak or bioterrorism attack. In 2005, NIH developed a complete set of in-vitro screening tools that can be used to test compounds for activity against bacterial and viral pathogens. In 2007, NIH plans to use combinatorial chemistry, a technology for creating large populations of molecules or libraries that can be screened en masse and testing them rapidly, in order to develop several compounds for antimicrobial activity. |
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Last revised: February 20, 2006
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