This week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), held a hearing this week on medical innovation, specifically following up on implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act (CURES), enacted in December 2016. The hearing featured testimony from NIH Director Francis Collins and FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. The CURES Act was aimed at speeding the discovery and FDA approval of new therapies and cures. The law included additional funding for the NIH’s Precision Medicine, Cancer Moonshot and other programs, creation of a new expedited FDA approval pathway for new antibiotics and establishment of the Next Generation Researchers initiative.
Much of the hearing discussion focused on the NIH’s Next Generation Researcher’s Initiative and how it is working to provide funding support for new investigators, opioid research and FDA initiatives to combat opioid abuse and the need to continue increasing NIH funding to sustain research into patient advances.
