Research funding for the National Institutes of Health needs more support, according to the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB).

After compiling data from 1995 through the President’s fiscal year 2011 budget, the FASEB identifies a series of trends showing that the NIH budget, funding for research grants, and number of research grants have all increased since 1995. But without the 2009 supplemental appropriations from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the ‘stimulus package’), NIH’s current spending power would not be as high as it was a few years ago, after its budget nearly doubled between 1998 and 2003, says the FASEB. Conversely, success rates for applications have dropped about 14% in the past 15 years— something NIH director Francis Collins has predicted will certainly continue under the proposed budget.

President Barack Obama’s FY2011 budget backed science, boosting NIH’s budget by US$1 billion to a total of US$32.1 billion—a 3.2% increase that matches the predicted rate of biomedical inflation. However, according to FASEB, the rate of inflation used there is too low and the proposed budget will not be sufficient to sustain progress toward all of the emerging opportunities currently supported by the FY2010 budget.

“Based on projections from the President’s budget summary, we will see a significant decline in the number of grants in FY2011 at the proposed funding level,” states Howard Garrison, director of FASEB’s Office of Public Affairs and author of the data resource. “This represents a reduction of research capacity and the potential delay or interruption of promising new efforts to find treatments and cures for life-threatening diseases.”

Their summary calculations suggest that the purchasing power of the NIH will decrease from US$36.4 billion in FY2010 to US$32.2 billion (14.3%), and the research capacity of the NIH will shrink by 11.1%. The total number of research project grants may drop from 39,579 to 35,202.

Fearing the looming cliff of the expected post-ARRA sag, the advocacy group, which represents 23 biomedical societies, recommends that Congress appropriate US$37 billion for NIH in FY2011.

“The supplemental appropriations the agency received in FY2010 has created a wealth of emerging opportunities that cannot be ignored,” states FASEB president Mark Lively. The group argues that a reversion back to pre-ARRA funding levels will result in lost jobs, terminated projects, and delays in life-saving research.

“We want to ensure that policymakers understand that our progress against devastating conditions like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease depends on sustaining the momentum of our current enterprise,” Lively says. “This is more than just a trend in data; it is symbolic of a diminishment of hope.”