President Barack Obama’s announcement detailing the $100 million project to map the human brain has caused ripples of excitement through the biotech, big data and epatient communities. But that excitement has been tempered by a certain amount of trepidation over how this project will impact life science researchers counting on government funding for their own research coupled with the effects of sequestration.
In a live streaming discussion with NIH Director Francis Collins and DARPA director Dr. Arati Prabhakar, questions raised on Twitter ranged from whether there would be a role for epatients to play and whether the findings will be made publicly available to budget concerns. Here are some of the highlights.
How can #patient communities be involved? And what patient-relevant outcomes can they expect? When? #BRAIN #WHChat #medicalresearch
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Collins said the working group would need the support of patient advocates for this enterprise, just as the human genome project relied on support from patient advocates.
Can you please address the concern that there will be a “BRAIN drain” of funds away from other reaearch areas. #WHChat @whitehouseostp
— Michael Tomasson (@MTomasson) April 2, 2013
Within DARPA,Prabhakar said the project was just one part of a broad range of what it’s doing. Addressing the question of where the money is coming from, Collins said that most of the funds coming from the NIH are coming from Blueprint Neuroscience Research Fund, which represents about 0.3 percent of its funding. There’s also money coming from non profit institutions. Here’s some of the breakdown:
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- DARPA: $50 million
- NIH: Blueprint Neuroscience Research Fund + discretionary funds: $40 million
- National Science Foundation: $20 million
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute $30 million annually
For a more detailed breakdown, follow this link.
“We felt this was the perfect moment to convene the perfect dream team,” Collins said. The NIH working group, led by Dr. Cornelia Bargmann of Rockefeller University and Dr. William Newsome of Stanford University, will give detailed scientific goals and develop a multi-year plan for achieving those goals with timetables, milestones and cost estimates this summer.
Still the debate continued on Twitter where scientists expressed concern about the effects of sequestration
@mtomasson @whitehouseostp apparently only 40mil is coming out of NIH budget though.Looks like = $ public/private whitehouse.gov/infographics/b…
— Jason Pipkin (@jipkin) April 2, 2013
@mtomasson @whitehouseostp it’s 0.13% of NIH budget.but yes assuming flat funding then 40M here is 40M not somewhere else
— Jason Pipkin (@jipkin) April 2, 2013
And that spurred Collins to emphasize the long term benefits that have sprung from the $3 billion investment in the human genome project. “This creates the opportunity for breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, autism. “It’s not like we are putting this money somewhere where it doesn’t belong. Right now seems like the wrong time to put this on hold.” There were also a few questions about what if any information from the project would be made available to the public and when that would happen.
Francis Collins talks about making NIH-funded research available open access in less than 12-months! #WHchat Yay!
— Kate Mills (@le_feufollet) April 2, 2013
Another member of the Twitterati wanted to know about the ethical implications and who would look out for public safety.
RT @ecast_network: Who will represent the public re trust, societal implications BEFORE research begins? @nihdirector#BRAIN #WHChat
— scicheer (@scicheer) April 2, 2013
Collins said the president would ask the government bioethicist to look into it.”I totally appreciate the importance of this.”
Are there any @xprize style incentive prizes as part of the BRIAN Initiative? #WHChat
— William Pomerantz (@Pomerantz) April 2, 2013
Collins said there were no immediate plans for an incentive prize but would welcome ideas for some, particularly when some of the data from the BRAIN initiative is made available to the public.
