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Pallone Highlights NIH Funding Key to NJ with Committee Passage of 21st Century Cures

May 21, 2015

WASHINGTON, DCCongressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06), Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced National Institute of Health (NIH) funding key to New Jersey within the 21st Century Cures Act, passed today by the Committee by a unanimous 51-0 vote. Pallone has been a leader on the legislation, which would facilitate the advancement of cutting edge science and foster the more efficient discovery, development and delivery of new treatments. Specifically, among other provisions, it would establish the NIH Innovation Fund, which would allocate an additional $2 billion each year to the agency through fiscal year 2020. The funding increase would directly impact New Jersey, which, as of 2014, had more than 50 NIH-funded organizations. NIH-supported biomedical research has led directly to breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of disease and has served as the basis for private industry research and development at pharmaceutical labs and device manufacturers throughout New Jersey.

“NIH’s budget has been consistently eroding over the last decade, but with 21st Century Cures, New Jersey and our health and research organizations would receive a critical boost,” said Congressman Pallone. “From searching for a cure for cancer to working to prevent infectious disease epidemics, NIH funding is vital for New Jersey to stay on the cutting edge of life-saving research and high-level job creation. It took hard work and a bipartisan effort to advance the bill through the committee, and I am thrilled with all the good it can do for New Jersey.”

NIH grants represent the largest source of federal support for research conducted at Rutgers and especially at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) in New Brunswick. NIH also provides significant support to the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Piscataway, and the JFK Medical Center in Edison.

Also of importance to New Jersey, the legislation would allow the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to award $5 million in grants to research institutions – such as Rutgers University – to study the process of continuous drug manufacturing. Continuous manufacturing, which would replace the outdated “batch manufacturing” process, will benefit patients and pharmaceutical companies by increasing quality and efficiency, leading to higher quality and lower cost prescription drugs. Rutgers is already a leader in this field. A partnership among Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Engineering Research Center for Structured Organic Particulate Systems (C-SOPS) partners with industry to advance the innovative process in its two-story, state-of-the-art continuous manufacturing lab in Piscataway. See Congressman Pallone’s statement on this portion of the legislation HERE.