The CLS would like to take this opportunity to inform you of a bill currently working its way through Congress. The Enhancing Small Business Research and Innovation Act of 2009, among many other things, seeks to increase the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program from 2.5% to 3.5% for any federal agency budget that provides more than $100 million for research—including the NIH.

The CLS is generally very supportive of the SBIR program. The program was established at the NIH (along with the Small Business Technology program) with the goal of helping to transform basic laboratory and patient-oriented research conducted by federally-funded academic scientists into commercial applications, by funding competitive grants to relatively small companies around the country. The CLS believes that the SBIR program is an important component of the NIH mission to advance public health through science.

However, increasing the SBIR set-aside from its current 2.5% level to 3.5% would adversely affect the ability of the NIH to support other important components of its portfolio at a time when the agency’s spending power is weak.

Last month, the CLS and nearly 100 other groups sent a letter opposing the provision to increase the set-aside. Signatories on the letter warn that the "mandatory increase in the SBIR allocation across agencies will necessarily result in funding cuts for the peer-reviewed research conducted by other organizations" through the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and others. Instead, the groups urge Congress to "increase funding for all research, thereby increasing the total investment in SBIR."

It is now your time to ACT! Call or write your Senators and ask them to tell Small Business Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu and Ranking Member Olympia Snowe to keep the set-aside at 2.5%. Rather than increasing support for one area of research at the expense of others, tell your Senators to increase funding for all research agencies, thereby increasing the total investment in SBIR.

Previous efforts to increase the small business set-aside have been defeated owing to concerns from scientists and their institutions. The small business advocates such as the Chamber of Commerce will be lobbying hard for passage of this measure, we must ensure our voices are heard.

The SBIR program is set to expire on July 31st, so time is of the essence. It takes just a few moments to make a big impact on Capitol Hill. To find and contact your elected Representative, enter your Zip Code in the box on the right of the screen. You’ll be transferred to a site where you will find a draft letter for your use. Add your email signature and the letter will automatically go to your elected officials.

Capitol Hill has begun the annual appropriations process that will determine the funding level for FY10 for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

President Obama released the details of his proposed FY10 budget on May 12. In it, the President recommends a 1.4% or $442 million increase in funding for the NIH over FY09. The discussion of the Administration’s FY10 increase does not include the $10.4 billion the NIH received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The President’s plan also sets aside $268 million of the proposed $443 million increase for cancer and autism research.

Our friends in Congress share our concern regarding disease-specific NIH funding. The House and the Senate Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Subcommittees (LHHS) have held hearings with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the hearing witness. Both Chairman Obey (D-WI) and Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) asked if it is appropriate for lawmakers to decide to fund research on one disease at the expense of other diseases. Chairman Obey is quoted as saying, "the result will be political chaos in an area that ought to be determined by science."

The House LHHS Appropriations Subcommittee expects to consider the LHHS bill that funds the NIH by July 8, and have it ready for the full House to vote on the bill by July 22. The Senate has not announced the schedule for consideration of the LHHS appropriations bill.

The advocacy community is concerned about the small proposed increases in the NIH budget for this year but is sensitive to the view of legislators and the administration that the $10 billion in stimulus funds for NIH justifies the modest increase in the annual appropriation this year. Our contacts in Congress and the administration assure us that they are aware of the drastic drop in total NIH funds that will occur when stimulus funds are spent, unless the regular NIH appropriation receives a substantial boost in 2011.

The CLS will alert you when it is time to take action on the NIH appropriations proposal.

On June 9, the full House Appropriations Committee approved the funding levels recommended by the House Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee for the FY10 NSF appropriations.

The Committee approved funding for NSF at $6.9 billion—an increase of $446 million or 7% over FY09—but $145 million less than the President’s request of $7.045 billion. The Committee felt that the NSF would be financially stable even with the smaller increase than the President’s recommendation given the additional $3 billion provided to the agency from the stimulus package.

The Committee’s funding recommendation, however, still provides the necessary resources for NSF to continue on the doubling path identified in the COMPETES Act. One of the key components of the COMPETES Act is to increase the U.S. scientific talent pool by vastly improving K-12 mathematics and science education. Thus, the Committee supported $1 billion for science education. That funding level represents $68 million above the President’s request and $36 million above FY09 to support all aspects of science, technology, engineering and math education from kindergarten through graduate school.

The CLC will continue to keep you informed about each step in the debate toward the completion of the FY10 federal budget, with frequent updates posted on the Coalition’s web site at www.coalitionforlifesciences.org. If you’d like to follow news the CLS cares about, join us on Facebook.

The month of June promises to be a busy one for the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus (CBRC), as it welcomes three prominent researchers in very different, yet equally valuable, fields to Washington, DC, to present on their important scientific discoveries to Capitol Hill members and staff. First, on June 3rd, Dr. Atul Butte of Stanford University held a briefing on Using Genes to Redefine Disease. Dr. Butte is at the forefront of the nascent field of translational bioinformatics—a field that seeks to create new diagnostics and therapeutics from genome-era information and data. He discussed how new uses for publicly available data have allowed us to ask new questions, including the nature of disease. Dr. Butte is able to show how using genes to redefine disease enables the discovery of new causes for disease, suggests novel roles for drugs in the treatment of disease, and, for the first time, allows us to probe the inner commonality across diseases that previously seemed dissimilar.

The CRBC welcomes Dr. William Wulf of the University of Virginia on June 10th with the timely topic of Improving the US’s Innovation Ecology. Dr. Wulf, the AT&T Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, recently issued a stern warning to a gathering of his colleagues, saying, “Engineering needs innovation to stay ahead. We’re not going to be able to compete with China and India on cost. We need to compete on quality.” Dr. Wulf will examine the ecology of interacting laws, regulations, and institutions that are intended to support innovation in the United States, but that are currently outdated and not well suited to the technologies of today and tomorrow.

Finally, on June 17th, the CRBC is pleased to have Dr. Chad Boult, Professor of Public Health, and Director of the Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, give a presentation on Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Health Care for Older Americans. Dr. Boult has long been interested in developing and testing novel approaches to organizing, financing, and delivering health care to older populations, as well as improving the outcomes experienced by people whose chronic illnesses require care that spans the hospital, post-acute, and home care settings. His briefing will focus on the concept of Guided Care, a new model of comprehensive health care that constitutes a type of “medical home” for high-cost Medicare beneficiaries. In the first year of a recent federally funded, multi-site, randomized controlled trial at Johns Hopkins, Guided Care significantly increased the quality of health care for this population while reducing the total cost of its care by 11% ($1,365 per beneficiary per year).

The Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus is fortunate to have three such distinguished researchers from such varied fields of study come to Washington this month, and be able to provide a forum where Members and staff can interact directly with them directly. For more information on locations of each of these briefings, as well as a complete listing of all 2009 CBRC briefings, please go to the CLS calendar.