This month, President Obama signed the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) appropriations bill for fiscal 2010, starting October 1, 2009 (see IBO 12/15/09). The HHS budget increased 5.3% to $803.5 billion The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both part of the HHS, benefited from modest budget increases this fiscal year.

NIH

Overall, the fiscal 2010 budget for the NIH increased 2.3% to $31.0 billion. Although the budgets of the majority of NIH programs, offices, institutes and centers increased for fiscal 2010, there were some notable decreases. The NIH’s Office of Director (OD), which plans and manages NIH programs, is the only one of the NIH’s 28 offices, institutes or centers to experience a drop in its fiscal 2010 budget, which decreased 5.7% to $1.2 billion. One large contributor to this decrease was the cessation of the OD Director’s Bridge Award Program, which dispensed $92.1 million in fiscal 2009 for competitive grants that had missed funding deadlines. The NIH’s budget for Buildings and Facilities also decreased dramatically, falling 20.4% to $100.0 million.

Of the OD’s funding, $544.1 million will support the NIH’s Common Fund, a 0.5% increase from fiscal 2009. The Common Fund supports cross-institute research and requires participation by a minimum of two NIH institutes or centers. Funding is awarded through mechanisms that include Transformative Awards and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards, which support early-stage research. In fiscal 2010, the NIH plans to increase the number of Transformative Awards granted.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the largest NIH Institute. Its fiscal 2010 budget increased 2.8% to $5.1 billion. The NCI plans on increasing its “Understand the Mechanisms of Cancer” program by more than 5% to over $900 million. A major priority for the program will be expanding the scope of the “Cancer Genome Atlas” in order to study new tumor types in addition to the ovarian, brain and lung tumors currently under investigation. The budget for the NCI’s “Develop Effective and Efficient Treatments” program increased by more than 4% to nearly $1.3 billion. For fiscal 2010, the program’s priority is to utilize a mix of genomic research and research on the functional changes of tumors to identify areas where further drug development is necessary for cancer.

The fiscal 2010 budget for the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) increased 2.6% to $4.5 billion. More than half of the NIAID’s budget will be used for research project grants. The NIAID intends to increase the number of competitive and noncompetitive grants that will be funded in 2010. Funding for the NIAID’s Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (BEID) program increased by more than 0.5% to over $1.3 billion. For fiscal 2010, basic research will be a priority for the BEID, including research on microbe-host interactions.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s budget increased 2.7% to $3.1 billion. According to the Institute, in fiscal 2010, it plans to mount a detailed investigation of the role that cardiomyocyte mitochondria plays in heart disease.

Smaller institutes, such as the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Biomedical Engineering (NIBIB) also received modest increases in their fiscal 2010 budgets. The NIAMS’s budget rose 2.7% to $539.1 million. The NIAMS plans to increase the number of research grants for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, and for cellular mechanisms associated with autoimmune diseases and cancer. The NHGRI’s budget increased 3.1% to $518.0 million, but its support for sequencing programs in fiscal 2010 will vary. The NHGRI plans to increase its funding for medical sequencing programs by more than 8% to over $60 million. However, it intends to reduce its funding for large-scale sequencing by 25% to over $20 million due to the lower costs associated with next-generation sequencing technology. For fiscal 2010, the NIBIB’s budget increased 3.4% to $318.6 million. It will focus on supporting research proposals for the creation or use of imaging technology for the identification of cancer and other diseases at a cellular and molecular level before clinical symptoms appear.

CDC

The CDC’s fiscal 2010 budget increased 1.4% to $6.4 billion. The “Zoonotic, Vector-borne and Enteric Diseases” program’s funding for food safety research increased 19.6% to $26.9 million. In fiscal 2010, the CDC plans on expanding public health laboratory capacity by developing and deploying better methods for identifying, characterizing and sub-typing foodborne pathogens.

Fiscal 2010 funding for the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases program increased 4.7% to $136.3 million. Funding for the program supports infectious disease laboratories, surveillance systems and epidemiological investigations of infectious diseases. Funding priorities for the program this year include the expansion of the “Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases” program, and increased support of the CDC’s Cooperative Agreement, which funds state and local health departments’ detection and control of infectious disease outbreaks. Specific projects supported with fiscal 2010 funds will include the development and refinement of second-generation methods for disease cluster and outbreak identification.

The CDC’s “Chronic Disease Prevention, Health Promotion, and Genomics” program supports the translation of advances in genomics research into applications in CDC laboratories. For fiscal 2010, CDC funding of such research increased 0.2% to $12.3 million. Funding includes $3.1 million for primary immune deficiency syndrome research and $9.2 million for public health genomics research. Such funding is based on competitive grants.

Significant US Fiscal 2010NIH Budget Figures

FY10 ($M) % Chg.

National Institutes of Health 31,019 2.3

Office of Director 1,177 -5.7

National CancerInstitute 5,103 2.8

National Institute of Allergies andInfectious Diseases 4,516 2.9

National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute 3,096 2.7

National Institute of Diabetes, Digestiveand Kidney Diseases 1,808 2.7

National Institute of NeurologicalDisorders and Stroke 1,638 2.8

National Center of Research Resources 1,268 3.3

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences 689 4.1

National Institute Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases 539 2.7

National HumanGenome ResearchInstitute 518 3.1

National Institute of Biomedical Imagingand Biomedical Engineering 318 3.4