NIH outlines budget for new translational center

The NIH is seeking to appropriate $721.6 million in the FY12 budget to establish the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), according to a letter from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. About $553 million would come from the reallocation of a portion of resources from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), the operations of which are set to be dismantled and spread across other NIH centers. NCATS would take over NCRR's Clinical and Translational Science Awards program, with a budget of $479.8 million. An additional $100 million would be allocated from the Office of the Director for the Cures Acceleration Network, which will be located in the new center -- Congress authorized the network in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The proposal would more than double the budget for NIH's Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases, which would be moved into the new center with a budget of $50 million. Plans for the center have been known since December, when NIH Director Francis Collins said he would consolidate translational science activities into NCATS. However, the creation of NCATS and the Cures Acceleration Network is contingent on Congress passing and the president signing a budget for FY12 (see SciBX: Science-Business eXchange, Dec. 16, 2010). ...