Washington Editor

With the exception of the mega-boost U.S. biomedical research has been receiving from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), financial support has slowed significantly in recent years, with researchers declaring the era of rapid funding growth now dead.

After adjusting for inflation, government and private-sector biomedical research funding grew by an average annual rate of 3.4 percent from 2003 to 2007, compared with the 7.8 percent experienced during 1994 to 2003, investigators wrote in the Jan. 13, 2010, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

And 2008 appeared to have been even worse, with funding from industry and the National Institutes of Health - the largest federal contributor to biomedical research - decreasing by 2 percent, the researchers said.

"Research investment appears to have returned to its previous cyclical pattern of increases noted since the 1940s," the authors of the JAMA article asserted.

If unchanged, the deceleration in funding could have a significant negative impact on the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and academic research institutions that rely on government and private funding, the researchers contended. "Researchers and sponsors are increasingly aware that financing is necessary, but not sufficient, to sustain progress," the authors wrote.

The study, funded by the NIH, was a follow-up to an analysis by the same authors published in 2005, which showed that biomedical research funding from all sources had tripled in nominal value and doubled when adjusted for inflation between 1994 and 2003.

The re-examination published this week provided confirmation of some trends seen in the authors' earlier study and gauged, to some extent, the impact the recession has had on research funding.

While the public in general has overwhelmingly supported additional investment in biomedical research, health care reform and the recession have made communicating the benefits of that research more challenging for Congress, industry and the academic community, lead author Ray Dorsey, assistant professor in the department of neurology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, told BioWorld Today.

He noted that investments in biomedical research during the 20th century, which resulted in advances like new vaccines, led to a doubling of life expectancy.

The other major benefit of U.S. investment in biomedical research has been job creation, Dorsey said.

But with Congress currently considering a nearly $1 trillion health care reform package, "it will be a challenge balancing the investments made aimed at improving the health of large populations vs. developing scientific advances, which at times can be more narrowly focused," he said. Nonetheless, Dorsey said, biomedical research funding must remain a priority.

Total funding for biomedical research increased from $75.5 billion in 2003 to $101.1 billion in 2007, which after adjusting for inflation, was $92.3 billion in 2003 and $105.6 billion in 2007—a 14 percent increase, or a compound annual rate of 3.4 percent for 2003 to 2007.

The available funding data in 2008 for the NIH and industry totaled $88.8 billion, a decrease from $90.2 billion in 2007, the researchers said. The authors noted that funding by foundations and charities, which were especially affected by the recession, also slowed from 2003 to 2007, compared with a decade earlier.

Industry remained the largest contributor to biomedical research, accounting for 58 percent of all expenditures in 2007. The NIH remained the second-largest contributor, accounting for 27 percent of biomedical research expenditures, followed by other federal agencies at 5 percent.

State and local governments also accounted for 5 percent of biomedical research expenditures, while private nonprofit support was at 4 percent. Support from pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies increased from $40 billion in 2003 to $58.6 billion in 2007 - an increase of 25 percent when adjusted for inflation, the researchers said.

The largest contributor to biomedical research remained the pharmaceutical sector, followed by biotechs and medical device companies. But medical device firms, after adjusting for inflation, demonstrated the largest rate of growth at 59 percent, followed by biotechnology companies at 41 percent - both eclipsing the pharmaceutical sector, which was at 15 percent.

In an accompanying editorial in JAMA, Thomas Boat, of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, complained about the "year-to-year variability, cycles of plenty and paucity and low levels" of funding for academic research facilities, which he noted depend heavily on federal funding for biomedical research support, a majority of which is granted by the NIH.

The biomedical research community has experienced a "bust-boom-bust cycling" of NIH funding over the past 14 years, "the consequences of which may never be fully delineated," Boat asserted.

And industry funding in 2008, he added, has "no longer compensated for declining NIH funding.

"Variable research funding has been an obstacle for research program and research faculty development, as well as sustainability, in medical schools and biomedical research institutes," Boat said.

While welcomed by investigators, he warned that the injection of the $10.4 billion ARRA funds into research "has the potential to initiate another uncoordinated and disruptive boom-bust cycle of biomedical research funding if not linked to carefully orchestrated follow-on funding."

Indeed, on his first day on the job, NIH Director Francis Collins worried that the end of the ARRA stimulus funds could send his agency off a cliff next year. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 18, 2009.)

The data from Dorsey and his colleagues, Boat said, makes a "strong case for more consistent, coordinated, data-driven and sustainable decisions regarding biomedical research funding."