National Institutes of Health (NIH) Budget Cuts May Slow Personalized Cancer Drugs

Development of personalized cancer treatments tailored to the molecular makeup of individual tumors may be jeopardized by little-changed or reduced U.S. funding for biomedical research, according to a new report. The American Association for Cancer Research instead recommends an 8.6 percent increase in the National Institutes of Health fiscal 2012 budget, to $33.3 billion. The Philadelphia-based group, the world’s largest cancer research organization, is responding to a $322 million cut to the NIH this year.