Lawmakers today began discussing the details of a newly created drug development program at the National Institutes of Health ( NIH). The NIH Director Francis Collins told a panel of the Senate he is eager to begin, once the program has a budget.
The Cures Acceleration Network (CAN) was proposed last year by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the champion of biomedical funding stuffed with $ 10.4 billion in stimulus money the budget of the NIH last year. He also helped to insert CAN without any funding in the health reform bill. Located within the office of the NIH, CAN help researchers bridge the "valley of death", the difference between a discovery laboratory and the steps needed to get a loan drug to be tested in clinical trials. The law allows a budget of CAN $ 500 million, which disburse grants of up to $ 15 million.
Collins held a retreat all day last Thursday to discuss the network with its 27 institutes and centers managers. "There was great enthusiasm," said a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee today. "Not that the NIH would become a drug development company," he added, but would build "partnerships" with the private sector "are really exciting and unprecedented."
The 500 million $ 20 would be enough to support drug development projects "soup to nuts", and 20 other projects using compounds that companies had abandoned by "repurposing" them, Collins said. But it's not just money. He said the law allows the program to be "DARPA-like," comparing it to a Defense Department program known for financing distant research ideas. NIH would have the flexibility it does not have now "to manage means very forward-looking projects" with a "quick recovery."
First, the committee will give CAN a budget, however. The money can not come out of the increase of $ 1 billion that President Barack Obama has proposed to NIH in 2011 because the agency is facing historically low grant-funding rate next year when the stimulus runs out , Collins said. Specter, a member of the committee, seemed discouraged. "We could make a billion dollars" or even $ 2 billion, he suggested. But chairman of the subcommittee, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), noting that his subcommittee also funds education programs, replied: "you tell me where you get the money ... and we'll remove"
said Collins Science Insider that "love to start. with a completely aggressive program "for the CAN and that waiting a year would be" frustrating. " NIH can not even hire staff to run the program until Congress approves a budget. "Everything depends on what these guys and their friends in the House [of Representatives Appropriations Committee] decide," he said.
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