UCSF Faculty Seek Greater Support for Biomedical Research

UCSF leaders and faculty members are asking Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer for their support in obtaining $29.75 billion - a 5 percent increase -- for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in fiscal year 2007. Concerned that the NIH is facing its third consecutive year of sub-inflationary increases, some 445 members of the UCSF faculty wrote a letter to the senators asking for a $1.4 billion increase in funding. The NIH, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research that improves health and saves lives. More than 80 percent of the NIH budget supports extramural research at 3,100 institutions around the world, including UCSF. This is the first time in recent history that the UCSF chancellor, executive vice chancellor and all four deans of the schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy, as well as prominent faculty members, have signed a letter seeking greater support for the NIH, according to Paul Takayama, executive director of Community and Governmental Relations at UCSF. "It's important for the research and scientific community to communicate their support for the NIH and to articulate the importance for biomedical research," Takayama says. The UCSF letter dated July 13 points to seven significant discoveries by UCSF researchers, including the discovery of techniques of recombinant DNA, which initiated the biotechnology industry, as well as the Nobel-prize winning discoveries of the protein basis for mad cow disease and the cellular basis for cancer and oncogenes. "As the fourth largest recipient of NIH funds in the country, we are extremely grateful for the resources required to conduct research that will eventually lead to treatments and cures for a range of diseases," the letter states. "However, we are very concerned that NIH, facing its third consecutive year of sub-inflationary increases, is likely to have 11 percent less spending power in 2007 than it did in 2004. "Medical research is a lengthy, meticulous and deliberate process that does not offer the assurance of immediate reward, but the discovery of credible and effective treatments and cures for human suffering does not occur in any other way." The UCSF letter states that freezing NIH funding would have severe implications, such as delaying important breakthroughs made possible by the two-tiered review grant process. "For example, a UCSF project to identify older Americans at highest risk for new-onset and persistent disability earned an excellent score that would have meant likely funding in January 2005. However, funding was delayed for over a year." Read the full UCSF letter here. (pdf) President George W. Bush has proposed flat funding for the NIH in fiscal year 2007. For his part, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, MD, also put in a budget request for $28.4 billion in fiscal year 2007, the same as fiscal year 2006. Zerhouni's NIH budget request is posted on the NIH website.