NCI director revealed early details of stimulus package’s effect on cancer research

Increased funds will boost cancer research, increase grant payline to 25th percentile.

AACR 100th Annual Meeting

Yesterday, John E. Niederhuber, MD, director of the National Cancer Institute, revealed the first broad highlights of the planned allocation of the $1.3 billion in stimulus funds provided to the National Cancer Institute through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

John E. Niederhuber

In his speech at the AACR 100th Annual Meeting, Niederhuber said that since this funding is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the NCI must be “committed to the core belief that how we spend all of the resources we are granted, how we strive for comprehensive plans and strategies must, by their boldness and vision, provide answers that ultimately change the course of the diseases we call cancer.”
Click here to watch Dr. Niederhuber's speech.

The allocation of this funding, in addition to the 2.9% increase in appropriated budget for 2009, must be used “to fund our best science,” Niederhuber said.
Click here to listen to Dr. Niederhuber's speech at the AACR 100th Annual Meeting.

Increase in payline

One of the largest “boosts” to cancer research from the stimulus package will be the increase to the NCI grant payline, which will allow the institute to fund more meritorious investigator-initiated projects. However, the use of new funds from the stimulus package and the increased budget must remain separate.

The funding from the 2009 budget increase will raise the NCI’s grant payline from the 12th percentile to the 16th percentile. Funding deserving grants that were reviewed in 2008, but which fell outside of the payline, will be a first step. In addition, any other grants that are above the 16th percentile will be funded for four years by the increased budget.

According to the NCI, “The payline represents the cutoff above which an application will be funded, as determined by its scientific review and priority scores. The payline is established based on the number of expected applications and the available funds designated for competing grants, meaning that it can change throughout the year as NCI can more accurately assess the number of incoming applications and available resources.”

When funds from the stimulus package are added, the payline will increase to the 25th percentile. Grants that fall from the 16th to the 18th percentile will be approved for four years — the first two years funded by stimulus money, the second two by appropriated budget funds.

Grants that fall from the 18th to the 25th percentile will be a mix of two- and four-year grants with funding drawn from coordinated but separate administrations of budget appropriation and stimulus funds. Two years’ funding will be guaranteed, with the third- and fourth-year funding uncertain.

Niederhuber explained that the NCI is taking “a bit of a gamble” with this approach. When funding plans were drawn up, the NCI had to take into account that although there are extra funds available in 2009 and 2010 from the stimulus, those funds may not be available in 2011 and 2012. It needed to draw up a model that anticipated operating on an approximately $120 million deficit in the latter years.

“It falls to the NCI to carefully calculate and thoughtfully assume the risks of initially funding some four-year grants with economic stimulus money, knowing that we will need to find additional resources for the out years,” Niederhuber said.

In recent years, with a payline up to the 12th percentile, the NCI has been able to fund about 20% of grants submitted. With the payline nearly doubling, the number of grants funded may also come close to doubling, Niederhuber said. More grants to first-time investigators and aiding universities who have had to decrease research funds in recent years in assisting and training new faculty investigators are priorities.

Key initiatives

In addition to the increased number of grants being funded, Niederhuber also announced three key initiatives that “hold important promise to unlock cancer’s genetically driven pathways and move them forward to first-in-man studies.”

First is an expansion of The Cancer Genome Atlas, which is designed to accelerate understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. The Cancer Genome Atlas has already sequenced more than two hundred tumors in glioblastoma and in lung and ovarian cancers, but moving forward, it will be tasked with the goal of identifying all of the relevant genomic alterations in 20 to 25 major tumor types.

Second, NCI will build upon data discovered by The Cancer Genome Atlas to develop a personalized cancer care platform. This “platform” will mean the integration of functional biology centers, chemistry and chemists, cooperative research groups and more, to create for the first time a system to encompass and enable drug development, from discovery of genetic changes to clinical applications for patients — ideally matching “pharmacogenomically characterized patients and molecularly profiled tumor types to highly specific molecularly targeted therapies,” Niederhuber said.

Finally, answering the call of President Obama to expand the boundaries of science, a network of Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers will be developed to explore new and innovative approaches to better understanding and controlling cancer through the convergence of the physical sciences with cancer biology.

“Can any of us say cancer causes less fear today than it did fifty or one hundred years ago?” Niederhuber asked. “Because cancer remains such a feared condition, I believe the demand from the leaders of our country and the American people will intensify in the years ahead: a demand for there to be changes in the way we approach the conduct of science; changes in the way the outstanding science that springs from our laboratories is translated, rapidly and safely, into improved health for our patients.” – by Leah Lawrence

For more information:

• Niederhuber JE. Address by the director of the National Cancer Institute. Presented at: AACR 100th Annual Meeting; April 18-22, 2009; Denver.