Congress highlights need for National Cancer Institute to increase attention to kidney cancer research and its early detection efforts.

Yesterday (December 18, 2015), Congress passed the $1.8 trillion omnibus appropriation bill for Fiscal Year 2016 (October 1, 2015 – September 30, 2016). The bill calls for an increase of $2 billion in the NIH budged and $264 million in the National Cancer Institute’s budget, bringing the latter to $5.2 billion. This is good news considering that from 2005 through 2013, the NCI budget was basically flat, averaging $4.9 billion.

Further, the following recommendation from Congress to the NCI was put into the bill at our behest:

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We ask for research on early detection; work on papillary and chromophobe, two underserved diseases; and additional SPORE programs, which are 5-year, $11 million grants to specialized cancer centers to study the biology and develop new therapies for kidney cancer.

To see the original language, go to https://rules.house.gov/bill/114/hr-2029-sa , click Division H PDF, which is Labor-HHS, and go to p. 32.

The agreement also includes the budget request of $200 million ($70 million of which is going to the NCI) for the new Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), “to accelerate our understanding of individual variability and its effect on disease onset, progression, prevention, and treatment”, which includes $70 million for “testing methods for prevention and treatment of cancers in a more precise way” – see http://acd.od.nih.gov/pmi.htm.

Finally, the budget also includes $50 million for the Department of Defense (DoD) Funding for the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program, which will be shared among 12 cancer types, including kidney cancer, plus immunotherapy research. To see the original language, go to http://tinyurl.com/ohxyqfz and search for “PEER-REVIEWED CANCER RESEARCH PROGRAM”.

The kidney cancer programs and recommendation are the result of ACKC’s advocacy effort earlier this year. To help us with our next campaign, please sign up at become an advocate. Also, you can help us with our efforts by donating at make a donation.