The Senate Appropriations Committee this week unanimously adopted its so-called 302(b) spending allocation for the 13 subcommittees, spending some $9 billion over what the president has said he wants in discretionary funds. Senate allocations differ sharply from the House-approved numbers in several instances, notably on domestic spending bills. The FY03 Labor-HHS spending bill is $4.4 billion higher. Senate Labor-HHS: $133.99 billion, plus $300 million in emergencies; House: $129.9 billion; Bush: $129.9 billion.

Congressional action on Labor-H is unlikely to occur until Fall. The House is poised to pass the FY03 Defense and Military Construction spending bills before recessing this week, and Appropriations Chairman Young said the FY03 Interior, Agriculture, Treasury-Postal and Legislative Branch spending bills are all on tap for action in early July. The House schedule leaves the most contentious appropriations bills --including Labor-HHS, Commerce-Justice-State, Foreign Operations and VA-HUD --until last.

Friends of Cancer Research in conjunction with the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI), five of the country’s leading pharmaceutical companies, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health has initiated a unique partnership on clinical trial accrual.

FOCR helped organize this pilot program that partners the NCI with Aventis, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo Wellcome, Lilly Corporation, and Novartis to identify and overcome the barriers to building an adequate infrastructure for early phase testing of promising new treatments in the war on cancer.

Funds contributed by these industry partners will be directed gifts to support research outlined in RFAs generated by NCI to be distributed among five to eight cancer center grantees. Their charge: to develop an exportable model for nationwide use in encouraging participation in early phase clinical trials. The Foundation will coordinate the private partners’ involvement ensuring their participation and recognition.