A draft bill approved yesterday by a Senate spending panel would give the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a $1.8 billion raise, for a total of $48.9 billion, in the 2025 fiscal year. That 4% increase is generous compared with a flat funding level in the version of the bill proposed by the House of Representatives. The Senate bill also contains language to help NIH prevent sexual harassers who change institutions from receiving NIH funding.
The Senate bill would restore the budgets of three high-profile NIH programs funded through a separate pot of money created by the 2016 21st Century Cures Act. After sharp cuts this year, the All of Us project to compile genetic and medical data from 1 million people would receive a $184 million boost and the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative an additional $278 million, bringing both back up to 2023 funding levels. The Cancer Moonshot, for which Cures funding ended this year, would ramp back up to its 2023 level of $216 million.
The bill also maintains funding of $1.5 billion for the 2-year-old Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, an agency meant to nurture cutting edge treatments, which the House bill would slash by two-thirds. And it includes separate $275 million increases for research on mental health and Alzheimer’s disease, $100 million for an artificial intelligence biomedical data initiative, and smaller increases for women’s health, diabetes, and several other research areas.
Whereas the draft bill from the Republican-controlled House would shrink NIH’s 27 institutes into 15, the legislation from the Democrat-controlled Senate contains no such sweeping plan. But an accompanying report urges NIH to reconvene a defunct advisory board to consider possible changes. The Senate measure also omits several restrictions in the House bill, including a broad ban on funding for “gain-of-function” research that gives pathogens new abilities and for fetal tissue studies.
The Senate bill does agree in its report with the House version on one reform proposal: that NIH should limit directors of its 27 institutes and centers to two 5-year terms. Some past directors have served for decades, including Anthony Fauci, who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years.
United for Medical Research, which represents many biomedical research groups, “is very pleased by the $2 billion increase in NIH base funding,” the organization said in a statement. “The Committee’s action … helps ensure that medical research remains a national priority.”
Also welcome news for many biomedical researchers is language in the bill and report aimed at closing loopholes in NIH’s sexual harassment policies. The bill requires institutions to finish investigations of sexual or other harassment alleged of NIH grantees even if the alleged perpetrator has left the institution. It also gives the NIH director new authority to prevent a harasser from moving their grant to another institution.
Science has reported on one such “pass-the-harasser” case in which a researcher found by a Florida State University investigation to have committed serious sexual misconduct moved to the San Diego Biomedical Research Institute and not only took his two NIH grants with him, but won a third one.
The full Senate and House must now vote on their bills. The two chambers will then meet to finalize a compromise bill, most likely after the November elections.
