Increasing Federal Funding for Lymphoma Research:
The National Cancer Institute

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is a component of the National Institutes of Health, and one of eight agencies that compose the Public Health Service in the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The NCI, established under the National Cancer Institute Act of 1937, is the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training. Over the years, legislative amendments have maintained NCI's responsibilities and added new information dissemination mandates as well as a requirement to assess the incorporation of state-of-the-art cancer treatments into clinical practice.

NCI also coordinates the National Cancer Program, which conducts and supports research, training, health information dissemination, and other programs with respect to the cause, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer, including rehabilitation from cancer and the continuing care of cancer patients and the families of cancer patients. Each year, NCI funds thousands of research studies and allocates billions of dollars to cancer research, including millions invested in lymphoma research specifically (see graph below).

Unfortunately, after years of progress, funding for NIH and NCI has leveled off and in some cases decreased. Such stagnant funding levels are slowing the pace of lymphoma investigation and threaten everything from the modernization of the drug development process to improvements in clinical trial design.

 LRF supports increasing the NCI budget as a means to protect the country's investment in lymphoma research and the infrastructure required to accommodate the new science. Greater federal support for cancer research is necessary to provide investigators with the resources they require to accelerate the progress of research that will ultimately lead to new and innovative treatments for lymphoma.