The newly approved stimulus package includes $1.3 billion for cancer research in 2009 and 2010, and the head of the National Cancer Institute says that money will go a long way toward doubling the number of research grants that it approves.
Speaking at AACR, Dr. John Niederhuber says that the NCI has been able to fund only 12 percent of the grant requests it gets. An expanded federal budget is boosting that to 16 percent and the stimulus injection will push approvals to 25 percent of all requests. That's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he adds.
"As you well know, these are not simply science projects," he told the group. "They are laboratories that employ technicians and other highly skilled workers. They are places where experienced investigators work to develop doctoral students and fellows into the next generation of laboratory and clinical scientists."
In specific, the NCI plans to increase funding for a project that studies tumor DNA in an effort to find better cancer therapies.
- read the report from Reuters