Federal US FY19 Appropriations Boost NIH Budget

The US Senate Appropriations Committee has announced agreements on three FY2019 omnibus appropriations packages for the federal budget. The second package consists of appropriations bills for the Departments of Defense and Labor, HHS, Education and related agencies.

The package was signed into law on September 28, avoiding a partial government shutdown. The information below has been extracted from various federal documents, including explanatory reports and appropriations bills. (For information on the DoE’s budget, see IBO 9/30/18.)

 

NIH 

Within the DHHS, the NIH budget received $2 billion, a 5.4% increase, to $39.1 billion. A budget increase was provided by the Senate to every NIH Institute and Center for fiscal 2019.

This rise included $711 million for the 21st Century Cure Act, a 43.3% increase. As per the 21st Century Cures Act, $400 million was allocated to the NCI for cancer research; $57.5 million was provided for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; $57.5 million was budgeted for the National Institute on Mental Health for the BRAIN initiative; and $196 million was allocated from the NIH Innovation Fund for the Precision Medicine initiative, which received $186 million of the figure, and regenerative medicine research, which got the remaining $10 million.

Many other programs in the NIH’s various institutes received boosts to their budgets, including funding for research on Alzheimer’s disease, which jumped 28.0% to $2.3 billion. Although final figures were not provided, funding for the All of US precision medicine initiative grew by $86 million, while funding for the BRAIN initiative jumped $29 million. The budget for the Cancer Moonshot grew by $100 million. The Office of Director’s Common Fund received $606.6 million, plus an extra $12.6 million for pediatric research per the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act.

Other areas of research were also favored. For opioids research, $500 million was provided for research driving the development of alternatives to opioids, pain management and addiction treatment. To fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, $550 million was allocated, an increase of $37 million. Congress also encouraged the NIH to develop and broaden the scope of clinical infrastructures and networks for the research of genetic and sporadic frontotemporal degeneration (FTD). The purpose of this directive is to increase knowledge of the disease, while establishing an infrastructure for biomarker discovery and clinical trials.

Key to this are advancements in informatics in order to create a solid infrastructure for FTD research, which includes the collection and recording of data and samples, incorporation of data reported by patients, and the use of new technologies that promote IoT. Also cited as important to the directive is the development of a “data biosphere” generated with multi-omic platforms that will provide a network for researchers, including younger scientists from various fields, to share datasets.

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