Biofuels from the country's heartland, designer bacteria for environmental remediation, and genetically altered microbes for carbon sequestration— all projects on the U.S. Department of Energy to-do list—are challenging nuclear medicine for the attention of scientists who synthesize radioisotopes and design nuclear imaging devices at the DOE national labs.
The federal agency actually stopped funding nuclear medicine in 2005 at the behest of the Bush administration. White House officials then believed the funding responsibility for nuclear medicine should be shifted to the National Institutes of Health. Nuclear medicine at DOE remained on the shelf in fiscal 2006 and 2007. After intense lobbying by SNM, Congress revived the funding in fiscal 2008 with a $17.5 million appropriation.
DOE RESISTANCE
But DOE resistance to underwriting scientific work on nuclear medicine may have actually increased since the election of President Obama. The rationale now revolves around the need to concentrate on energy and environmental objectives. Nuclear medicine leaders are trying to employ the same scientists to create future generations of molecular imaging probes and instruments for medical applications.
The conflict has thus far resulted in a standoff. DOE holds an inherent advantage because of its control over the national laboratories. But nuclear medicine has powerful friends in Congress. They have thus far made sure that the energy agency continues to devote a small portion of its funding to nuclear medicine research.
CONGRESS INTERVENES
At the urging of SNM, Congress included language in the fiscal 2009 appropriations act, approved March 11, that specifically instructs DOE to spend $17.5 million on nuclear medicine applications research. The total budget for biological research at DOE is $411 million, including $31.5 million for medical applications and measurement science.
The society chose to rely on congressional action to preserve the funding because it understands that DOE opposes its position, said Hugh Cannon, SNM director of health policy and regulatory affairs.
“This is why we went to Congress looking for language that specifically says how the money will be spent,” he said.
The Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), the DOE group that has traditionally overseen nuclear medicine, articulated its current position in a November 2008 DOE workshop on radiochemistry and instrumentation for radionuclide imaging. It noted that radionuclide imaging methods used in human and small-animal imaging are also ideal for plant, microbial, and environmental science. Potential applications include new radioisotopes for tracking nutrients and photosynthetic metabolite flux in plants and new high-resolution imaging devices capable of microscopically depicting plant cells and microbes.
“The program will support fundamental research that will advance our mission in biology and environmental science and develop new methods for real-time, high-resolution imaging of dynamic biological processes,” said Anna C. Palmisano, Ph.D., director of BER, in an interview with Diagnostic Imaging.
ENFORCING DISCIPLINE
According to her critics, Palmisano also plans to enforce more discipline on the national labs to discourage work that is inconsistent BER's mission. A directive describing terms for the new BER Scientific Focus Area program instructed program managers to provide “clear goals and strategic guidance . . . to enable the national laboratories to build integrated and coherent programs to meet BER strategic goals.”
BER's preferences seem clear to senior scientist Stephen E. Derenzo, Ph.D, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, where PET, SPECT, and other nuclear imaging platforms have been developed for more than 30 years.
“We have been given a very strong message from Anna Palmisano that if it involves radiochemistry and instrumentation in support of biofuels and environmental remediation, she will fund it. If it involves human health, she will deny funding,” he said.
But Palmisano emphasizes that the door remains open for NIH grants for medical applications, and she has promised to follow the intent of Congress to spend the designated nuclear medicine funding as instructed. BER's focus on plant imaging may result in discoveries that influence human imaging applications as well, she said.
NIH OPTION
“It is not as though they have to suddenly find funding from NIH,” she said. “NIH has a long history of taking advantage of the opportunities, the expertise, and the specialized equipment at our national laboratories.”
Some national laboratory scientists oppose using NIH money to support their work. They complain the typical competitive twoyear cycle of funding at the National Cancer Institute and other NIH organizations is poorly suited for the kind of longterm projects they undertake. The NCI subsidized only 16% of the applications for R01 grants (the standard NCI grant for individual researchers) in 2008, down from a 50% approval rate a few years earlier.
Still, Barbara Croft, Ph.D., director of NCI's cancer imaging program, said that the institute has funded some projects at the national laboratories for up to 10 years.
“I'd say our continuity is pretty good,” she said.
Soon after the congressional appropriation, Joanna Fowler, Ph.D., a senior chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, still expressed concern about the likelihood of DOE funding.
“We used the DOE money to fund the development of tracers and the NIH money to apply them to specific clinical problems,” she said. “It has been a very good synergy. We just can't fund medical research with DOE money anymore.”
