NIH Funding: 'If the money stops, so does the science'

Quoting from LifeScience Aurora in the Aurora Sentinel earlier this year:

"National Institutes of Health grants have long been vital for scientific research at Colorado universities and to the startup companies the research spawns. The federal research giant doles out more than $30 billion each year, much of it in research grants...

...At the Colorado BioScience Association, executive vice president April Giles said officials have been lobbying Colorado’s congressional delegation hard in recent weeks to find a way to save NIH from the funding axe.

Possible cuts are particularly worrisome for the bioscience companies, she said, because they could come at a time when states are scaling back funding for colleges and universities where a lot of the research that spawns bioscience businesses is happening.

The grants are vital to startups, Giles said, because they allow a company to prove that their idea is scientifically viable. From there, researchers can look for other investors in the private and public sector, but NIH is often the first significant funding source that allows a business to get started.

'NIH is the start of it all. Nothing happens initially without NIH investment,' she said."

Link to the Aurora Sentinel Article