Concerns about NIH 'Common Fund'

Some US medical researchers and patient group advocates are concerned that a congressionally authorized "Common Fund," designed to advance interdisciplinary research across institutes and centers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will siphon needed resources from specific disease areas such as cancer and diabetes.

The fund has received support from major biomedical groups, including the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), who argue the measure will stimulate collaboration. But some say that the cost of this collaboration may be too high.

"The idea of creating a research enterprise devoted to diseases that transcend the institutes is a good idea," said Robert C. Young, president of Fox Chase Cancer Center and chair of the Board of Scientific Advisers to NIH's National Cancer Institute. "If the budget were going up to allow the Common Fund increase to occur, it wouldn't be so painful. But this is being implemented in a setting of diminishing NIH funding," Young told The Scientist.

NIH's Fiscal 2008 budget proposal seeks $486 million for the Common Fund, a 17 percent increase of $72 million, and representing about 1.7 percent of NIH's budget. Part of this comes out of the NIH director's office, but most is taken from each institute and center.

Young argued the Fund amounts to a "tax" on NIH institutes and centers; John Bartrum, NIH's budget director, disagreed. "The Common Fund is not a tap or a tax on the institutes and centers," he told The Scientist. "It's pooled support for research."

In August 2006, the NIH stated that the Common Fund would not exceed 1.7 percent of the NIH budget until the agency's overall annual appropriations grew at a rate exceeding that of biomedical inflation, estimated at 3.7 percent for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, 2007. While NIH budgets for Fiscal 2007 and 2008 have not surpassed inflation rates, many remain worried.

"The issue is the increase to the Common Fund budget," said Ellen V. Sigal, chairperson of Friends of Cancer Research and a member of NCI's scientific advisory board. "People are very concerned about where the money is going to come from," she told The Scientist.

"As long as there is this huge Common Fund, and institutes and centers like NIDDK [National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases] are being flat-funded, I look at it as a 'back door' cost to each institute," Jim Schlicht, executive vice president of government affairs and advocacy at the American Diabetes Association, told The Scientist.

However, many research advocates support the Common Fund, including representatives of major biomedical research associations who endorsed the concept during congressional testimony last year. "We think the Common Fund is a good idea," said Chris Fox, executive director of the American Association for Dental Research. "Our concern is the overall authorization level for NIH," he told The Scientist.

Earlier versions of the NIH reauthorization bill directed half of all NIH budget increases to the Common Fund. After complaints from the biomedical research community, the final version merely instructs the NIH director to "submit recommendations to Congress" when the Common Fund exceeds 5 percent of the budget. "Many groups breathed a sigh of relief, because this meant the Common Fund was not going to represent a huge and hurried change," FASEB public affairs director Howard Garrison told The Scientist.

The Common Fund is an outgrowth of NIH's Roadmap for Medical Research, initiated in 2002 to fund interdisciplinary and high-risk research. Research projects already funded under the Roadmap/Common Fund range from a large grant establishing a seven-state collaborative network to screen proteins, to an individual research grant solving structures of eukaryotic membrane proteins.

Ted Agres
mail@the-scientist.com

Links within this article

NCI Board of Scientific Advisers
http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/bsa.htm

T. Agres, "Flat NIH funding again in '08," The Scientist, February 6, 2007.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/home/49077/

NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis and Strategic Initiatives (OPASI) Fact
Sheet, August 2006
http://opasi.nih.gov/documents/OPASI_FactSheet_Aug06.pdf

Biomedical Research and Development Price Index: FY 2006 Update and
Projections for FY 2007-2012, Feb. 5, 2007
http://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/PDF/BRDPI_letter_2_5_07.pdf

NIH Fiscal 2008 budget request
http://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/PDF/Press%20info-2008.pdf

Friends of Cancer Research
http://www.focr.org

Hearing transcripts
http://energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/09192006hearing2031/hearing.htm

American Association for Dental Research
http://www.dentalresearch.org

NIH Roadmap
http://opasi.nih.gov/documents/NIHRoadmap_FactSheet_Aug06.pdf

NIH Roadmap Funded Research
http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/buildingblocks/fundedresearch.asp

NIH "Roadmap" Grants Will Establish Nine Screening Centers in Seven States, June 15, 2005.
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/jun2005/nimh-15.htm

G. Wagner, "Expression, Labeling/NMR Structure Determination (RMI)," 1R01GM075879-01
http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/CRISP_LIB.getdoc?textkey=7012136&p_grant_num=1R01GM075879-01&p_query=&ticket=16900852&p_audit_session_id=79305832&p_keywords=