The National Institutes of Health (NIH) remains the largest source of funding for biomedical research in the United States (U.S.). However, the current tight fiscal climate is creating concerns related to the success in obtaining NIH funding. In this report, we focused on analyzing the trend of new and renewal competing R01 applications, as a measure of the most prevalent NIH funding mechanism that supports many U.S. laboratories and the new science being proposed in the field. We analyzed data regarding R01 applications submitted to the NIH, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences (DCVS), and the Vascular Biology and Hypertension Branch (VBHB) for fiscal years 2010 through 2014. This comparative analysis at multiple levels allowed us to position the situation of cardiovascular research R01s, from within the “big picture” of NIH funding to looking at specific trends at the level of particular areas of investigation within VBHB. We found that the success rates of competing R01s decreased at all levels: NIH, NHLBI, DCVS, and VBHB. Interestingly, we found that competitive renewal R01 applications remained more successful (about 2 times) than new R01 applications at all levels during this period. By identifying and analyzing some variances to the general trends, we found that some successes may be attributed to effectively utilizing the specific R01 structure that supports team science (i.e., Multiple Principal Investigator, MPI, awards), which enables the active collaborations among investigators with different expertise to pursue together a novel scientific hypothesis.
Keywords: biomedical research; cardiovascular disease; financial support; government; hypertension.