最近美国癌症学会（American Association for Cancer Research， AACR）发表一项研究认为近几年来NIH的经费一再削减被认为将严重阻碍癌症的研究。由于基因组学的迅猛发展，人们发现癌症已经不像过去那样不可攻克，然而目前美国国家经费投入的短缺却可能会阻碍这一进程。根据AACR的报告，美国NIH的研究经费已经连续数年降低。相较于十年前，NIH的经费缩水了20%以上。2013年，NIH的研究经费仅有290亿美元，因此2013年也成为了自2001年以来，NIH自助研究项目最少的一年。
    据此，AACR表示，NIH对生物医药领域的投资对疾病研究有着极其重要的作用。仅在过去的18个月，已经有13种癌症药物获得批准。而目前已经有41种不同癌症靶点的药物获得FDA批准，而五年前和十年前这一数字分别仅为17、5。因此，美国政府应当慎重思考权衡相关政策。（药家网yaojia.org）
    详细英文报道：
    Years of flat funding from the National Institutes of Health plus across-the-board federal spending cuts known as sequestration could have deleterious effects for cancer research, says a new study by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
    While cancer treatment has seen incredible progress in recent years because of advances in genomics research, weakening federal investment could adversely affect the ability of scientists to carry out current research projects, reduce the number of new grant proposals that the National Cancer Institute can support and result in fewer job opportunities young researchers entering the field.
    According to the AACR report, the amount of annual funding for NIH has been less than what is needed to keep pace with biomedical inflation. In the late 1990s, following a period of stagnant budgets, Congress ramped up medical research funding for 5 years. But in the 10 years since the doubling ended in 2003, the NIH budget has been steadily shrinking.
    On top of that, the sequester cuts rolled out in March 2013 slashed the NIH budget by $1.6 billion, just over 5%. The impact to the National Cancer Institute was a cutback of $239 million, according to the AACR report, which was presented to Congress March 13.
    "Despite the $1 billion in funds that were restored to the NIH and NCI in January, these agencies' budgets remain far below what they were in fiscal year 2012 because of sequestration. And when taking into account medical inflation, NIH's ability to fund lifesaving research has been cut by more than 20% over the past decade," AACR CEO Dr. Margaret Foti said in a statement.
    The report found that at the reduced fiscal year 2013 funding level of $29 billion, the NIH is now funding the lowest number of research projects since fiscal year 2001.
    The AACR said that support for biomedical research translates directly to improvements in care for patients, citing 13 new cancer drug approvals in the past 18 months and 6 new drug indications for different types of cancer. In addition, there are now 41 FDA-approved therapies that target specific molecules involved in cancer, compared with 17 target therapies 5 ago and just 5 a decade ago.