Report: Federal funding spurs medical research

Imagine working for years to earn top-notch credentials, winning a job with a prestigious employer, launching a project you believe could make a big impact … and then discovering that a crucial source of funding for your work is just beyond your reach.
Imagine knowing that while you pursue those elusive grants, your project might be stalled for years, even as your employer evaluates your long-term prospects based on the results you get.
Biomedical researchers have always faced that prospect, but now, with National Institutes of Health funding essentially flat for the last five years, the situation has become critical and threatens the future of Americans’ health, a report issued last week says.
“NIH grants are critical to the long-term research that results in medical breakthroughs and improved health and health care for all Americans,” says the report, titled “A Broken Pipeline?” issued by Brown University and six other academic institutions.
The flat-funding of the NIH, which when adjusted for inflation means a 13-percent drop in purchasing power since 2003, is breaking down the scientific research pipeline, the report adds. “Even as substantial advances appear within our grasp – including breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s disease, lung cancer and depression – they are at risk of slipping away.”
Moreover, the report notes, academic research is crucial for the biomedical research industry, and reducing health care costs by improving treatments, especially for chronic diseases, is crucial to the nation’s long-term economic health.
Locally, officials at Brown note, the biomedical sector is seen as one of the most promising areas for economic development – both in terms of startups working to commercialize academic research, and in terms of larger, established companies.
So while the struggles of a few scientists might not look like a big deal, the report suggests, the impact of losing them, and discouraging others, could be dramatic.
The situation highlighted by the report is particularly striking because of the contrast to the five previous years: From 1998 to 2003, Congress doubled the NIH budget, and the infusion of resources helped scientists complete the human genome project, develop a slew of new technologies and make breakthroughs that are already saving lives, such as a reduction in mother-to-child HIV transmission from 25 percent to 1 percent.
But as the field has flourished, the demand for NIH grants has also grown. Brown, for example, has made huge investments in life sciences, increasing lab space by 75 percent in three years, and doubling external funding for its Division of Biology and Medicine and its hospital partners in five years, to $200 million. NIH funding is a crucial part of that, with three Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) facilities opened in recent years, plus an NIH-funded Center for AIDS Research, and numerous smaller grants.
In the 2005-06 academic year, NIH grants accounted for 45 percent of Brown’s total research funding, or $58.7 million, said Clyde Briant, vice president for research at Brown. The NIH is the university’s single biggest research funding source, dwarfing any private grant sources, but that doesn’t mean Brown scientists don’t have to struggle to get NIH money.
The “Broken Pipeline” report includes profiles of two Brown researchers: Tricia Serio, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular Biology and Biochemistry who joined Brown in 2002, and Carthene Bazemore-Walker, an assistant professor of chemistry.
Serio, whose research involves prions – mysterious proteins that can change shape and act like infectious agents, causing diseases such as mad cow disease, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s – applied three times before getting a five-year $1 million NIH grant in 2006.
She had some flexibility because she’d received a 2003 Pew Charitable Trust grant, and Brown had given her startup funds as well. But she was almost out of money by the time the NIH came through, and she’s seen many of her peers leave academia because they couldn’t get grants. “If you exit that pipeline at any point,” she said, “it’s really hard to get back in.”
Bazemore-Walker, who joined Brown in 2006, is using analytical chemistry – including state-of-the-art mass spectrometry – to identify biomarkers of kidney disease, focusing on lupus but with potential applications for diabetes and other diseases. Yet she has yet to get NIH funds, which, she says in the report, “puts me in a very uncomfortable situation.”
Overall, only 24 percent of NIH grant applications were successful in fiscal 2007, down from 32 percent in 1999, the report shows, and the success rate of first-time applications has dropped from 29 percent to 12 percent. The average age of first-time recipients of one key grant, known as RO1, has risen from 39 in 1990 to 43 in 2007.
Serio noted that NIH funding such as her grant “has a big effect on the local economy,” because it pays the salaries of research lab staff and also supports the university as a whole. It also lets people like her not just do cutting-edge science, but also train others, she noted.
“This has very practical considerations,” she said. “It’s a crisis right now, but the real devastating effects of this are going to be long-term.” &#8226