True, President Joe Biden is proposing the largest-ever funding increase for NIH, with a substantial percentage of funds going toward cancer (The Cancer Letter, April 9, May 28, June 4, 2021).
Alas, cancer researchers who have been funded by NCI are unlikely to benefit from this windfall, should it materialize. Most of the new money—$6.5 billion—would go to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, and NCI is slated to get a less-than-jaw-dropping 2.7% increase in fiscal 2022.
While 2.7% is not nothing, it will do very little to enable NCI in its efforts to wrestle the Research Project Grants payline up to the 15th percentile by 2025 (The Cancer Letter, Feb. 12, 2021). In February, NCI Director Ned Sharpless said NCI was on track to meet that goal In FY2021, but this may be knocked off track—and off the rails.
