Congress has made medical research funding a national priority in the fiscal year 2016 omnibus spending package. Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy applauds this significant step towards restoring the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to a path of growth to accelerate the tremendous promise in cancer research.
Besides the $2 billion increase for NIH in the bill, the NCI and FDA will receive increases of more than 5 percent over their 2015 budgets. These three organizations drive translational therapies and ultimately improve the quality of life for cancer patients.
Congress is fully funding President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, poised to transform health care. NIH is creating a national research group of volunteers to increase our understanding of disease, and NCI will use next generation sequencing and other genome-wide methods to study, prevent, and treat cancer. Funds to the FDA will ensure that regulations are modernized to allow discoveries to be efficiently translated into safe and effective treatments.
It is critical that bipartisan support for medical research continues to sustain significant increases for the NIH, NCI, and FDA, transforming cancer care and optimism for our loved ones.