National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, told a crowd of medical researchers in Chicago he has a “sense of optimism” about the ability to offer more grants through the agency, while encouraging them not to shy away from bold projects.

Speaking at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Collins’ optimistic tone was due to the $2 billion in increased funding for National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the last federal budget. While the House and Senate will have to settle differences over what level of funding to appropriate for FY2017, both parties appear in favor of another increase—a fact Collins said should encourage researchers after years of flat funding or cutbacks.

“My goal is to try to be sure that everything we can possibly do is done to increase that kind of support we want to give you,” Collins said. “We need the help from the Congress. We need help from the administration, but…I have a sense of optimism that I wouldn’t be able to share with you three or four years ago.”

Collins was joined at the forum by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and the heads of medical research departments at Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Each said NIH grants are currently funding important projects at their institutions in the areas of precision medicine, cancer genomics and health data.  

Eric Neilson, MD, Northwestern’s vice president for medical affairs, singled out the school’s clinical translational science awards program funded by NIH.

“It involves our center for data science, our big data project, that covers population health, geonomics, imaging, signaling, analytics,” Neilson said.

Despite his optimism, Collins said there are still issues with medical research grants he’d like to address—namely, getting more requests for funding approved, instead of having researchers look for projects perceived to be a higher priority by the agency.

“The solution, if we have one here, is this steady rising tide to lift all the boats, this 5 percent real growth (in funding) per year,” Collins said. “If we could get back to the point where a success rate for a grant is one in three, which is what it used to be 20 years ago, instead of being one in six, then we’d really have something going. That ought to be our goal.”

The entire panel looked pleased when Durbin asked the audience how many have received or been involved in research thanks to a NIH grant. Several hundred people in the auditorium raised their hand.

Collins hoped that sort of experience would encourage researchers to propose major projects involving “big data,” like mapping the cancer genome.

“Dream big and pick problems that are really important,” Collins said. “Sometimes it’s tempting to take that problem that’s sort of the next obvious, derivative experiment—and that’s OK, too, we need that—but if you get the chance to pick something that is really, if it works out, going to be kind of a game changer, well, go for it. That’s we have the chance to do now more than ever. That’s what your talent and your vision can make possible. Go to it.”