A Senate panel cleared the remaining bills in a major legislative package aimed at improving medical innovation, but funding for medical research is still up in the air.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee advanced five bills on Wednesday to the Senate floor. The bills were part of a larger package of legislation that is the companion to the House’s 21st Century Cures Act, which the chamber passed late last year.
But while there is bipartisan support for the legislation, which aims to get new drugs and devices approved faster, new funding for the National Institutes of Health remains a sticking point.
Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said talks are continuing with Democrats to create an NIH innovation fund.
That would be one-time funding for NIH priorities that include Vice President JoeBiden’s cancer “moonshot” and the precision medicine initiative, which aims to create more targeted therapies for patients.
Alexander said lawmakers haven’t come up with an amount for the innovation fund and noted that the House passed $8.8 billion in mandatory funding for NIH over five years.
Democrats have pushed for mandatory funding of $5 billion a year for NIH.
Absent from the discussion on funding is whether there will be any boost for the Food and Drug Administration. The agency received $500 million to help implement the new provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act, which includes a new pathway for approving medical devices much faster.
The five bills the panel cleared Wednesday are aimed at reducing paperwork requirements for NIH research projects, getting new antibiotics approved faster to combat superbugs, and enabling FDA and NIH to attract top talent. Another bill is intended to help the precision medicine initiative.
Alexander said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would agree to bring the legislation to the floor but does not know when that will happen.
