Experts confident of Congressional funding for US Cures Act.

Just 5 weeks before his presidency ended, Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, a law that will sustain several of his signature biomedical research initiatives, streamline the US drug and medical device approval process, improve the nation’s mental health-care system, and combat the country’s opioid misuse epidemic. The legislation won nearly unanimous approval in both houses of Congress, a bipartisan consensus that might be suffi cient to protect it from the looming political storms as Washington lawmakers begin to upend Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Opponents of that eff ort, which fulfi ls a long-standing Republican campaign pledge, fear it could push new medical discoveries beyond the reach of patients who desperately need them. The 21st Century Cures Act will provide US$6·3 billion over the next 10 years, including $4·8 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support Obama’s Cancer Moonshot project exploring new cancer treatments, the Precision Medicine Initiative investigating how drugs can be genetically tailored to patients, the BRAIN Initiative developing new tools to understand the human brain, and a regenerative medicine programme using adult stem cells. Another $500 million is earmarked for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to hire more staff scientists at competitive salaries, and help get pharmaceutical products to market sooner. The Cures Act also provides $1 billion for Americans seeking drug addiction treatment. About half of the funding for the law comes from the ACA’s Prevention and Public Health Fund, with most of the remaining support coming from the sale of oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve. Obama praised the law at a White House signing ceremony in December, and then paused to remember his mother, who died of cancer. “She was two and a half years younger than I am today when she passed away”, said Obama, who is 55 years old. “And so it’s not always easy to remember, but being able to honour those we’ve lost in this way and to know that we may be able to prevent other families from feeling that same loss, that makes it a good day”, he said.