Budget Cuts Threaten New-Drug Initiative

Amidst the budget-cutting frenzy on Capitol Hill is a little-known National Institutes of Health program called the National Center for Advancing Translational Science. It's intended to speed development of new drugs to fight life-threatening and serious chronic diseases.

Formation of the Center was approved last year and President Obama supported increasing NIH's budget by $1 billion to get the program underway. But Congressional approval for the funding is in jeopardy, DC Insider reported today.

The prospect of losing the center is disappointing to the scientists, patient advocates and legislators who have pushed NIH to put more emphasis on translating basic research into drug development.

Patients suffering from autism, rare cancers and other disorders complain that the pharmaceutical industry has little interest in developing drugs for relatively rare diseases, since such drugs are not likely to be profitable enough to pay back their development costs.

In recent years, NIH has put more emphasis on what is called “translational research,” rather than basic scientific research – meaning finding ways to put basic research to work for ill taxpayers and their families.

The center is not without critics. Some have called it a government-run drug company that competes unfairly with Big Pharma. But its supporters say it will instead concentrate on areas of little commercial interest.

Scientists say it's the wrong time to cut off funding. With the mapping of the human genome, researchers say they are at the threshold of discovering new drugs that can transform medicine and lead to economic growth.

But realistically, the question now is not if NIH funding will increase but whether it can hold onto the funding level it had last year, said one experienced healthcare lobbyist.