Stimulus may assist cancer researchers

Stimulus to assist in cancer research

Washington, D.C. - Cancer research around the nation will be receiving a much welcomed boost in the form of an expected $1.26 billion from the $787 billion economic stimulus package signed by President Obama on Tuesday, February 17.

The government had allocated $10 billion of the stimulus package for the National Institute of Health, which is currently drafting its plan for distributing the funds. The $10 billion represents a dramatic increase in the agency's budget for 2009, judging by its 2008 annual budget of $29 billion.

Of the $10 billion, $7.4 billion is earmarked for the institutes and its research centers. Based on previous federal spending, $1.26 of that is expected to go to the National Cancer Institute, which had a 2008 budget of $4.81 billion.

It is believed that The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will get a large portion of the cancer funds distributed by NCI to fund its many major studies. The National Cancer Institute awards its grants on a competitive basis, and the world-renowned center, located in Houston, TX, typically garners more grant funding from NCI annually than any other institution in the nation.

M.D. Anderson's president, Dr. John Mendelsohn, applauds the federal spending which he says is a great investment in the U.S.'s future. However, he also urges the fund's distributors to be careful in how they give out the money. His concern is that while the money will generate immediate work, researchers conducting long-term studies which require steady funding, like the ones at M.D. Anderson, may be scrambling for additional money down the road.

A portion of the money from the stimulus is expected to be dispersed quickly to fund a backlog of thousands of grant applications already deemed promising. In recent years, roughly 20 percent of grant applications submitted to the NCI have been successful.

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