- After years of stagnant funding, medical research in the United States is set for a big cash infusion that experts expect will boost work on a range of ailments as well studies involving human embryonic stem cells.
The $787 billion economic stimulus measure President Barack Obama signed on Tuesday includes $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, with more than $8 billion of it to fund medical studies and the rest to upgrade research facilities.
Leaders in the research community said they expect money to go to scientists looking for better ways to treat cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, arthritis, Parkinson's disease and other conditions.
"We have been working around the clock to prepare for this possibility, to make the most effective, transparent and immediate use of these extraordinary resources," acting NIH Director Dr. Raynard Kington said in an e-mail.
NIH funding is the lifeblood of much U.S. medical research. NIH funding was doubled from 1998 to 2003 in a push started during the Clinton administration, but stayed flat for the past six years under the Bush administration.
The new money, which advocacy groups say is largely due to Republican Senator Arlen Specter, comes on top of the NIH's normal funding of about $29 billion a year and will be spent over the next two years.
Kington said the NIH will favor grant applications that already have gone through the review process and have "a reasonable expectation of making progress in two years." The NIH has had no permanent leader since Dr. Elias Zerhouni resigned last year.
The advocacy group Research! America, whose members include research universities and hospitals as well as drug companies, said the money could create 70,000 jobs because it will flow to academic and research institutions across the country.
BACKLOG OF RESEARCH
"There is a backlog of approved, excellent research that NIH has not been able to fund. And the money will be spent now in order to get those projects up and running," Mary Woolley, the group's president, said in a telephone interview.
