The fiscal year 2010 Labor-HHS-Education portion of the omnibus appropriations conference report funds the Colorectal Cancer Screening, Education and Outreach program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at $45 million.  This is a $6 million increase over fiscal year 2009 (14.3 percent increase).

We need your help to get Congress to continue to increase funding for colorectal cancer programs next year!  Register now to join us at the 2010 Call-on Congress, and continue reading for more details on fiscal year 2010 funding for cancer programs and research.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although the fiscal year ended on September 30, to-date Congress has only completed 5 of the 12 annual appropriations bills.  This week, Congress moved forward with a couple of important steps and it looks like they are now on track to complete the remaining 7 bills before the end of the year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the approval of the first 13* human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for use in NIH-funded research.  Children’s Hospital in Boston developed 11 of the approved lines and Rockefeller University in New York City developed two additional lines.

All of the approved lines were obtained from embryos left over by couples seeking treatment for infertility who consented to their use for research under the NIH’s Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, August 7, the Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment of Francis Collins, MD, PhD, as the new director of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Collins is both a physician and an expert in genetics.  He led the Human Genome Project to an early success in identifying and sequencing the 25,000 genes in the human genome and headed the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) from 1993 through 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

President Barack Obama

President Obama released his FY 2010 budget request. The budget requests $30.838 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a 1.4 percent increase ($443 million) over the FY 2009 level. This includes $5.15 billion for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) or $181 million more than the FY 2009 funding level. Read the rest of this entry »