NIH recovery grants top $5 billion

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Grants to be announced today (September 30) will bring the total amount of recovery act funding spent by the National Institutes of Health to more than $5 billion, top officials said this morning. The NIH has awarded 12,000 biomedical research grants since the the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was passed in February. An linkurl:analysis;http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/ARRA/ published last week by the American Association for the Advancement of Science indicated that the NIH had awarded only about $2.6 billion of the $10.4 billion it netted in the recovery act. Today's announcement adds almost $3 billion in awarded funding to that figure. "I am confident that millions of Americans alive today, and millions more in the future, will live longer and healthier lives because of the grants we announce today," said NIH director Francis Collins, speaking today at the agency's Bethesda, Maryland campus. Collins added that more than 1800 of the grant awardees had not received prior NIH funding. President Barack Obama -- who Collins introduced as the "Scientist in Chief" -- was also on hand in Bethesda to celebrate the announcement. "This represents the single largest boost to biomedical research in history," Obama said to a crowded NIH auditorium that also held Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, and others. Obama highlighted the promise of applying knowledge gained through studying the human genome to three disease areas: cancer, heart disease, and autism. "It's a promise we've only just begun to realize," he said. He noted that recovery act funding -- $175 million, according to the NIH -- will help expand the NIH's Cancer Genome Atlas, which will seek to collect more than 20,000 new tissue samples from more than 20 different types of cancer over the next two years. The president also mentioned that linkurl:Framingham Heart Study;http://www.framinghamheartstudy.org/ researchers can now begin to correlate the genomic profiles of participants with decades of observational data to start developing heart disease prevention and treatment strategies. Obama added that recovery spending would not only benefit biomedical research and medicine but would also buoy the nation's wider economy. "We can only imagine the new discoveries that will flow from the investments we make today," he said. "But we also know that these investments will save jobs and create new jobs." Obama even managed to squeeze in his standard health care reform pitch, telling the crowd that his plan did not amount to a government takeover of the health care system and that a reformed system depended on and would benefit from a strong and vibrant NIH. Obama closed by promising the assembled NIH staffers that his administration's commitment to biomedical research would not wane. "We are going to keep on providing the support that you need," he said.
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:Collins prepares for budget battle;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55891/
[17th August 2009]*linkurl:Bailed Out by Science;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55840/
[August 2009]*linkurl:Your guide to NIH stimulus funds;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55588/
[2nd April 2009]

NIH recovery grants top $5 billion

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