Advisory Council January 2015 Meeting Presentation: Research Progress

Monday, January 26, 2015

Washington, D.C.

Richard J. Hodes, M.D.
Director
National Institute on Aging

H.R. 83 - On December 16, 2014, the President signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, providing funding through September 30, 2015, as P.L. 113-235.
NIA received an additional $25 million in its budget for FY2015.
Total NIA appropriation increased from $1.172B in FY14 to $1.198B in FY15.

Report language:
- Alzheimer's Disease.-The agreement includes an increase of $25,000,000 for NIA. In keeping with longstanding practice, the agreement does not recommend a specific amount of NIH funding for this purpose or for any other individual disease. Doing so would establish a dangerous precedent that could politicize the NIH peer review system. Nevertheless, in recognition that Alzheimer's disease poses a serious threat to the Nation's long-term health and economic stability, the agreement expects that a significant portion of the recommended increase for NIA should be directed to research on Alzheimer's. The exact amount should be determined by scientific opportunity of additional research on this disease and the quality of grant applications that are submitted for Alzheimer's relative to those submitted for other diseases.
Report language acknowledged the $25,000,000 increase in NIAs budget.
No specific earmarks for AD were mandated, but the language states that a significant portion of the recommended increase for NIA should be directed to research on Alzheimer's.
Decisions about funding allocations should be determined by scientific opportunity and the quality of grant applications that are submitted for AD relative to those submitted for other diseases.

SEC. 230. Hereafter, for each fiscal year through fiscal year 2025, the Director of the National Institutes of Health shall prepare and submit directly to the President for review and transmittal to Congress, after reasonable opportunity for comment, but without change, by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Advisory Council on Alzheimers Research, Care, and Services, an annual budget estimate (including an estimate of the number and type of personnel needs for the Institutes) for the initiatives of the National Institutes of Health pursuant to the National Alzheimers Plan, as required under section 2(d)(2) of Public Law 111375.
Language in SEC. 230 of the FY2015 Appropriations Act requires a bypass budget for NIH Alzheimers disease research to be submitted to the President.
The HHS Secretary may review and comment, but not alter, the NIH budget submission.
The budget will be estimated based on the NIH components of the National Alzheimers Plan.
NIH is in discussion re: how the development of the budget will proceed.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is now officially part of the IADRP - their portfolio has been uploaded and they are listed as a member
- Their data now comprise almost 10% of the current IADRP records
CADRO has been adopted by the WHO for their upcoming portfolio analysis

Alzheimer's Disease project data from across 27 NIH ICs
Data from 32 public, private and international funding organizations representing 8 countries
Approximately 6,000 unique projects
An estimated 3,800 PIs working at approximately 1,000 institutions in 31 countries

Held on November 14, 2014
Shared progress on ongoing efforts in FTD and ALS human genetics research, with particular focus on genes that cause both FTD and ALS
Discussed strategies to improve clinical assessments, enable meta-analyses across genetic data sets, and validate candidate disease alleles
Co-hosted by NINDS, the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD), and the ALS Association (ALSA)

Files

Mtg15-Slides7.pdf (pdf, 931.44 KB)