NIBIB Funding Likely to Remain Relatively Constant
It now appears that funding for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering will remain approximately level in FY 2007. The Senate Appropriations Committee has sent S. 3708, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill to the floor. This bill provides funding for the National Institutes of Health, of which NIBIB is a part. Overall NIH FY 2007 funding in the Senate bill is $28.5 billion, which a committee statement notes is “an increase of $220 million over the FY 06 appropriation and $200 million over the President’s budget request.”
Here are the numbers:
Current NIBIB funding is $296.6 million.
The Administration requested $294.9 million, a reduction of 0.6% or $1.7 million.
The House Appropriations Committee’s bill provides the Administration request.
The Senate bill recommends $297.6 million, an increase of 0.3% or $1.0 million.
Accompanying this bill is Senate Report 109-287, which can be accessed at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app07.html . The Senate Report language is below. See http://www.aip.org/fyi/2006/082.html for the comparable House language.
“The Committee recommends an appropriation of $297,606,000 for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering [NIBIB]. The budget requested $294,850,000 and the fiscal year 2006 appropriation was $296,606,000. The comparable amounts for the budget estimate include funds to be transferred from the Office of AIDS Research.
“Artificial Pancreas.--Maintaining blood glucose levels as close to normal values as possible is proven to reduce the risk of long-term complications in diabetes. However, tight glucose control is difficult to achieve, especially in young children. The NIBIB is encouraged to expedite research on ‘closing the loop’ between glucose monitoring technologies and insulin delivery devices as a means to automate glucose control and improve disease management.
“Image-guided Surgery- The Committee continues to be encouraged by the potential of image-guided surgery to improve patient outcomes. The Committee supports the Institute’s efforts to expand its efforts in this area.
“Liver Imaging Techniques- Consistent with NIBIB’s mission to improve all diagnostic imaging technologies, the Committee urges NIBIB to continue to make liver imaging techniques a primary focus, speeding the development of new modalities that better capture the early stages of various liver diseases, including cancer, as well as offering the potential for less invasive combinations of diagnosis and treatment and the evaluation of livers from cadaver donors. The Committee urges NIBIB to participate actively in trans-NIH initiatives that address these priorities.
“Liver Tissue Engineering- The Committee urges NIBIB to focus efforts on expanding the Tissue Engineering Program to examine how the development and function of engineered tissues and organs can improve treatment techniques for patients afflicted with liver disease.
“PET and MicroPET- The Committee continues to encourage the Institute to provide increased support 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 undertaken by the various other Institutes of NIH.”
