The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week gave Congress more details on the budget for a project national Institutes of Health (NIH) reorganization that would create a center for research from bench to bedside. A key budget document is still pending, however, and if Congress will approve the center in time for the launch in October remains uncertain.
The plan announced in December for a National Centre for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has raised concerns that NIH may be venturing too far into drug development. Many researchers have also been upset by the decision of the NIH Director Francis Collins to create NCATS in part by the removal of another component of the NIH, National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).
Some senators and a House of Representatives key personnel have questioned the reorganization. At a Senate hearing in April, Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) complained that NIH has not presented details of the budget of NCAT.
HHS has now provided some of these details in a letter on June 6 in the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says NCATS will "propose innovative approaches to the development pipeline, provide new approaches for the diagnosis and development of therapeutic products, stimulate new avenues for basic scientific discovery, and complement the NIH research existing private sector. "
An attached table describes how the new center will change the 2012 budget request of the president. As expected, NCATS get Price $ 480 million clinical and translational sciences NCRR; $ 50 million NIH's therapeutics program for rare and neglected diseases and Cures Acceleration Network, which has no funding now, but would get $ 100 million. NIH also wants NCATS now to house its Office of Research on Rare Diseases of $ 18 million. Including other programs, NCAT budget would be $ 722 million.
The table does not list a few scheduled NCATS program that are now part of common director of NIH funds, including the $ 100-some million Molecular Libraries. But these programs could remain part of the Common Fund, but NCATS be administered, according to an HHS official.
As for the rest of the $ 1.3 billion NCRR, the table corresponds closely to a table NIH published in February. Among other changes, a large part of the funds ($ 303 million) which includes centers of primates and other comparative medicine programs would go to the office of the NIH. The National Institute of General Medical Sciences would get the $ 231 million price IDEA and $ 97 million in biotechnology programs. the Institute of the NIH minority health would take the $ 60 million research centers in minority institutions.
The table does not give Congress what he really needs, however, a change in the official budget of the Office of the White House's budget and management. Until that document is submitted, members of the appropriations committee staff may not include the reorganization in their bills for the budget of NIH for fiscal 2012 that begins October 1. And time is running out: The House subcommittee plans to mark its bill on July 26.
0 Komentar