In a move that appears to prioritize biomedical engineering over cancer research, President Joe Biden’s proposal for fiscal year 2023 cuts NCI funding by $199 million, a 2.9% cut from the current year’s level.
At the same time, the White House proposes adding $4 billion to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), Biden’s agency for high-risk, high-reward biomedical research—which he touts as a key element of his goal to “end cancer as we know it.”
This boost in funding for ARPA-H would create a tradeoff, potentially jeopardizing progress within NIH and its institutes, said Ellie Dehoney, vice president of policy and advocacy at Research!America.
“The National Cancer Institute and all of NIH uncover the fundamental knowledge and conduct other research that is needed to create the foundation for the large, high risk, high reward, later stage R&D that ARPA-H has been established to advance,” Dehoney said to The Cancer Letter. “Starving NCI will dry up the pipeline of new knowledge ARPA-H needs to generate breakthroughs in cancer.
