The federal government, principally through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), funds scientific research related to biology and human health that sets the stage for applied research and development (R&D) activity by industry, ultimately leading to the commercialization of new medicines and treatments. New drugs not only improve the quality and length of lives but reduce the costs to society from illness. In order to accelerate biomedical innovation, Congress doubled NIH founding around the turn of the millennium. The results are paying off with basic and translational research, including discoveries of the genetic basis of disease and development of related diagnostics and therapies. For example, cancer therapies are being tailored not just to a patient’s genome but to the genome of that patient’s tumors. Other discoveries include sickle cell genomic therapy,1 immunotherapy for breast cancer,2 a universal flu vaccine, the TAILORx genetic screening breast cancer trial,3 and discoveries for the treatment of Alzheimer’s.4 NIH funding overall plays an important role, not only in biomedical innovation, but in enabling a competitive U.S. life sciences industry, and the millions of good paying jobs associated with it. In fact, while overall manufacturing jobs have declined in the last two decades, the number of biopharmaceutical industry jobs has grown. As such, increasing NIH funding is important not only to improving the health of Americans, but in reducing health care costs and spurring global life sciences competitiveness.
