On July 18, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its Labor-HHS-Education
funding bill for FY 2003 (S. 2766). This bill provides funding for the
National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute of Biomedical
Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). Senate appropriators would provide
$283.1 million for this institute in FY 2003, an amount that includes
both new money and some transferred funds. House appropriators have
not drafted their bill yet.
The NIBIB was created in 2001 to centralize bioengineering and biomedical
imaging research across NIH. It received $112 million in FY 2002, and
$121.4 million was requested for FY 2003. The Senate appropriators expect
approximately $150 million to be transferred to the NIBIB from other institutes in FY 2003, continuing the consolidation of imaging
and bioengineering research within this new institute. This $150 million
transfer is accounted for in the Senate bill’s FY 2003 total of
$283.1 million. Excluding the transferred funds, the Senate bill would
provide $21.1 million in new money for NIBIB in FY 2003, an increase
of 18.8 percent over current funding.
Language from the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Committee
Report (S. Rpt. 107-216) pertaining to NIBIB is quoted below:
"Mission- The NIBIB improves health by promoting
fundamental discoveries, design and development, and translation and
assessment of technological capabilities in biomedical imaging and
bioengineering, enabled by relevant areas of information science,
physics, chemistry, mathematics, materials science, and computer sciences.
The Institute plans, conducts, fosters, and supports an integrated
and coordinated program of research and research training that can
be applied to a broad spectrum of biological processes, disorders
and diseases and across organ systems. The Institute coordinates with
the biomedical imaging and bioengineering programs of other agencies
and NIH Institutes to support imaging and engineering research with
potential medical applications and facilitates the transfer of such
technologies to medical applications.
"The Committee recognizes the contribution bioengineering
brings to medicine. Bioengineering improves the quality of life through
its contribution to advances in science and technology related to
health. The Committee understands that this newly created Institute
must have adequate resources to begin its important task of supporting
high-quality research.
"Juvenile diabetes- The Committee is aware that
imaging and bioengineering technologies could have widespread applications
for the treatment and prevention of diseases and conditions such as
juvenile diabetes. The Committee encourages the NIBIB to collaborate
with the NIDDK [National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases] on the development and application of imaging technologies
to evaluate and track the progress of biologic events non-invasively,
specifically the investigation and monitoring of beta cell destruction
during the onset of juvenile diabetes and indications of graft rejection
following the transplantation of whole organs, tissue, or cells. The
Committee also encourages the Institute to collaborate with the NIDDK
to develop non-invasive metabolic sensor technologies for the monitoring
of glucose and metabolism in individuals with juvenile diabetes.
"Molecular imaging technologies- The Committee
encourages the Institute to provide increased funding for molecular
imaging technologies such as positron emission tomography (PET) and
microPET to take advantage of the capacities of molecular imaging
to detect disease process at the molecular level and to monitor the
effectiveness of targeted gene therapies now under development. The
Committee also encourages the Institute to develop its research agenda
in close collaboration with other, disease-specific Institutes at
NIH, so that new imaging technologies are closely tied to the research
projects being supported by the NIH.
"Temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ)- The
Committee is mindful of the dismal history of failures in the case
of plastic and other materials used in implants to replace parts of
the temporomandibular joint. The Committee urges the Institute to
make studies of the TM joint and related structures a high priority.
"
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