Thursday, January 8, 2009

Mass. life sciences group seeks funding boost from Congress

By Marc Songini

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative is urging the state’s federal legislators to work to boost the funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of any upcoming economic stimulus package voted on in the U.S. Congress.

The collaborative has issued letters to the state’s Congressional delegation and to U.S. Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry requesting they back the request as a means to help stimulate the region’s economy in the long term, create jobs and ensure a pipeline of medical innovation into the future. “Funding for the NIH, the nation’s leading agency for scientific research funding and a major stimulator of drug and medical device innovation, has been flat for the past five years, and  due to inflation the agency’s budget has actually decreased in real-dollars by roughly 13 percent,” according to a statement from the collaborative. “As a result, the NIH is now funding less than two of every 10 grant applications.”

The collaborative estimated some seven new jobs are created with each grant, and each NIH dollar spent is worth two in terms of economic impact. Moreover, the collaborative claimed 10 percent of the NIH funding for biomedical research goes to Massachusetts institutions.

The co-chairs of the collaborative’s leadership council — Harvard University president Drew Faust, University of Massachusetts president Jack Wilson, MIT president Susan Hockfield and Genzyme Corp. chairman and CEO Henri Termeer — issued a letter on Tuesday to Massachusetts legislators outlining the consequences of not adequately funding the NIH research. 
 
The letter said: “The result is a slowdown in scientific progress, a reduction in the new business spinouts derived from biomedical research and a delay in the delivery of new therapies to patients. But, an even more insidious consequence of this erosion of NIH support is the way it has discouraged the next generation of scientific leaders from pursuing careers in biomedical research.” This is demonstrated by the fact that the average age of a NIH grant recipient is 43 and rising, “a fact that creates pause for even the most optimistic young scientist.”

The collaborative, part of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, is made up both of academics and business leaders and seeks to promote and guide the biotechnology industry in the state.