Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that it wants to strengthen national investment Institutes (NIH) of the health research on Alzheimer's disease with $ 80 million in new funding in the budget proposal of the President for 2013 which will be published next week. Although it is not so surprising-there are always new initiatives in the budget of NIH proposed even during the budgetary rigor-administration is also taking the unusual step of setting aside $ 50 million for the Alzheimer's studies in the budget this year. The decision, which was made at a higher level than the NIH, set off a scramble for where to find the money and how to spend it, according to officials of the NIH.
The administration reacts to the increasing number of Alzheimer's disease, which now affects as many as 5.1 million Americans and could hit 10 million by 2050, according to a press release yesterday by the Ministry of Health and social Services of the United States. "We can not wait to act," the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. The new money above $ 458 million that NIH already planned to spend on the brain disorder this year - also meets a new law that requires the government to come up with the plan of the disease a national Alzheimer effectively prevent and treat the disease by 2025
Congress decides to approve. or not $ 80 million for next year, the officials say the NIH has not yet been allocated to specific areas within the appropriations process. (the administration also requested $ 26 million for non-program -Research as caregiver support and public awareness.)
regarding the $ 50 million budget this year, half will go to genomics studies, the Director Francis Collins NIH said yesterday. According to Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on aging (NIA), so-called genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have found several new genetic risk factors slightly increase the risk of Alzheimer ' Alzheimer. But researchers hope to find rare variants and explore why, for example, some people who wear APOE4 gene known risk never develop the disease. The plan is to study of Exome and whole genome using DNA from the same groups of Alzheimer's patients and healthy people who were part of GWAS studies. These cohorts give the initiative "a great start from the head and is why something like this could actually be done this year," says Hodes.
But exactly where the $ 25 million for genomics come from "is actively being discussed," said Larry Thompson, spokesman for the National Institute for Human Genome Research (NHGRI). NIH has not had much time to plan, he said: '. OK, let "The Ministry [HHS] and White House said:" We would make an initiative on this, "and we said," One possibility is to add the project to the list of $ 104 million year NHGRI genome sequencing program, which supports the three major sequencing centers, and more things to do.
The other $ 25 million will be "broadly" Alzheimer funding proposals to grant NIA and other institutes which have received well in the peer review, but just missed the cutoff funding says Hodes. Some of the funding can also be assigned as supplements to existing prices. This plan is similar to how the NIH spent a lot of $ 10 billion in financing Resumption Act 2 years that the agency received in 09 and had a few months to allocate. Hodes said a group of NIH institute directors advise Collins on which specific proposals to fund.
The set-aside for Alzheimer's disease will mean less money and less funded research proposals, in fields other than Alzheimer's disease, Hodes said. He said that while $ 50 million over the $ 31.0 billion budget NIH "is not great" (it was 0.16%), at a time of historically low success rate subsidy, "he there will undoubtedly be people who will be affected. "
"This is something that should happen only in the most exceptional circumstances, and in this case, the Administration has determined that emergency Alzheimer's disease and demography be such a circumstance" , Hodes said. One reassuring point: because $ 50 million is for one year only, it should not change the basic funding level institutes, he said.
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