Report: Only 1 in 5 researchers get grants from National Institutes of Health

BYLINE: Karen Buckelew

Just one of every five research grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health earns funding, leaving nearly 80 percent of the nation's biomedical researchers virtually empty-handed. That figure was one of the cornerstones of a report released Monday that detailed the effects the NIH's static funding has wrought on bioscience and its researchers. Most American biomedical scientists seek NIH funding at some point. The agency supports more research than any federal agency except the Department of Defense, and private foundations do not have the means to pick up its funding slack, according to the report from a consortium of nine research institutions.

The group, including the Johns Hopkins University, self-funded the report for release as Congress considers the agency's fiscal 2008 budget request for $28.8 billion, a 1.1 percent cut from this year. Comparatively, inflation for the overall economy next year is projected to be about 2.4 percent. "New, innovative research is not being done; smart young people are not going into science," said Dr. Robert F. Siliciano of the Hopkins medical school, a co-author of the report entitled "Within Our Grasp - Or Slipping Away: Assuring a New Era of Scientific and Medical Progress. " "It's had a demoralizing effect on the whole research enterprise," Siliciano added. Siliciano and three fellow scientists Monday testified on Capitol Hill on the NIH's behalf. Next year would be the first cut to the NIH's funding allocation since 1970, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit industry group. The NIH estimates it spends about 97 percent of its budget on research and development. The agency's $29.2 billion fiscal 2007 budget just was finalized last month, and represented a 2.3 increase over the previous year - after Congress added $600 million to the NIH's budget request. Supporters hope Congress will add money this year as well. Siliciano and his co-authors are pushing for a 6.7 percent increase. Fewer scientists winning grants means fewer scientific breakthroughs, the infectious disease expert said - and fewer valuable technologies for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to license and commercialize. The NIH's purchasing power, according to the report, has decreased about 8 percent in recent years; other studies have pegged the decline as closer to 12 percent. That means the agency's flat budget, compared with the rising cost of doing business in biomedical research, is limiting its capabilities. In turn, scientists are foregoing applying for projects in riskier emerging fields like nanobiotechnology, and sticking with more tried-and-true options in hopes of winning money, the report asserts. "There's a growing feeling NIH is only funding the sure things," said Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At Hopkins, the federal funding crunch is deeply felt, Siliciano said. The average federal grant at Hopkins in 2002 was about $142,000; now the figure is down about 34 percent to $92,000. "This is the worst it's ever been," said Siliciano, who has worked as a scientist dependent on external grants for 18 years. "The NIH [is] the home for high-risk, high-payoff research that no one else would fund," Koizumi said. "We have to swing for the fences to get occasional breakthroughs. " The slowing in NIH funding comes after a boom that ended in 2003 with the conclusion of a five-year congressional plan to double the agency's budget. During that period, the allocation increased about 15 percent per year. But the war in Iraq and shrinking domestic spending overall has squeezed the agency's budget since, said Koizumi.