The fact that the budget of the National Institutes of Health has remained stagnant for several years threatens to drive young researchers into other fields, according to a dire warning issued by a group of leading research universities.

 

In a report called “The Broken Pipeline? Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk,” the universities, which include Brown University, Duke University, Harvard University, The Ohio State University, the University of California at Los Angeles, Vanderbilt University, and Partners Healthcare, argue that the failure to provide “consistent and robust” support could cause the nation to “lose a generation of young investigators to other careers and other countries.” That, they said, threatens to take with them a generation of promising research that could cure disease for millions for whom no cure currently exists.

 

The report follows up on a related report by a similar group of academic institutions in 2007 that argued stagnant NIH funding was slowing discovery and squandering the significant opportunities for breakthroughs that past investment has put within reach. Although the NIH’s $29.5 billion budget continues to keep the U.S. at the top of the heap in public funding of research, other countries are investing heavily in expanding their own biomedical research.

 

The NIH budget doubled between 1998 and 2003, but since then it’s dropped 13 percent in terms of real purchasing power. As a result, the universities said research progress has slowed, and leading researchers’ find new ideas are often unable to win funding. Today only one in 10 proposals win NIH funding on their first submission. Overall, NIH funds only one in four proposals today, down from one in three in 1999.

 

Kevin Casey, associate vice president of government affairs for Harvard University, was one of the organizers of the report. The Journal of Life Sciences’ Web Editor Daniel S. Levine recently spoke to Casey about the flat NIH budget, young researchers who are ready to call it quits, and the prospects for increased federal funding for biomedical research. Edited excerpts follow:

 

A: The first report was trying to capture what was actually accomplished with the doubling of the NIH budget. We interviewed 20 researchers, who were leaders in their field, and asked them what transformation occurred because of this huge infusion of funding with the genome being accomplished and stuff like that. What we heard was that their fields were transformed and the excitement was palpable about what was ahead for them.

 

We then asked about how flat funding was affecting their ability to capture the moment, so to speak. And then, we heard this sort of bipolar reaction, which was this sense of excitement about what was possible, and this despair about being unable to totally capture as quickly as they would like the fruits of that investment. That led to this focus that not only is this slowing science, but they feared was discouraging young investigators who were watching their mentors struggle.

A: I think the return has been exceptional and portends to be even better because of the personalization of therapies we are looking at in areas such as cancer, because of genomics and the manipulation of proteins enabled by powerful new tools, and the completion of the sequencing of the genome. That’s opened up an entirely new world for researchers.

 

There is definitely a growing gap between basic research in universities and pre-clinical research that pharmaceuticals or investors would go into. There is no doubt that academic institutions are about basic research and there needs to be something that bridges what academic institutions are producing, foments it to the point where investors will feel more comfortable taking the risk to invest before it gets to pharmaceuticals. This is something that NIH, institutions themselves, such as Harvard, and folks out on the West Coast are looking at. It’s not what this report was about, but it’s a legitimate question.