Wise Young, Ph.D., M.D.

Many people are raising funds for spinal cord injury (SCI) research but do not have a clear idea of what the funds are paying for. In the article, I will explain research grants and the cost of SCI research, the funding situation in the field, how to improve the quality and rate of research, and what we are doing at Rutgers University to encourage collaboration.

Grants

Most SCI research is funded by grants from government agencies, industry, or private foundations. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds over 60% of SCI research in the U.S. The NIH awards three types of grants: fellowship grants which provide up to $100,000/year for 3-5 years, individual research grants (R01) which typically fund $250,000/year for 3-5 years, or a program grant which may fund up to $1 million/year for five years to a group of investigators. State agencies, private foundations, and pharmaceutical companies usually give smaller grants of $50,000-$100,000/year for 1-2 years.

Grant budgets have two categories of costs: direct and indirect costs. "Indirect costs" refer to costs incurred by the institution for the research, as opposed to "direct costs" which are expended by the scientist doing the research. Indirect costs are usually estimated as a percentage of direct costs. Indirect costs vary from institution to institution, ranging from 10% to 90%. For example, at Rutgers University, the current indirect cost rate for federal grants is 57% of direct costs. This is typical for many research universities. Thus, if NIH awards direct costs of $100,000 per year for 5 years, the award will add an indirect cost of $57,000 per year, for a total grant of $785,000 over the five-year period.

Direct costs cover personnel salaries and benefits, equipment, supplies, communication, and other costs.

• Personnel. Salaries include a partial effort by a principal investigator, a research associate or postdoctoral fellow who has obtained an advanced degree (Ph.D. or M.D.), a technician (BA, MS), a graduate student, and occasionally undergraduate students (usually summer or part-time jobs). So, for example, a professor's salary typically may be $50,000 to $100,000. A research associate or postdoctoral salary is $30,000 to $42,000. Technician salaries range from $28,000 to $60,000 depending on experience and responsibility. A graduate student costs $25,000 (stipend plus tuition). Undergraduate students get $2000-$3000 for summer work and $6-$10 per hour during the school year.
• Equipment. A standard startup package of laboratory equipment for an assistant professor is typically between $100,000 to $200,000. This is enough to get the investigator started but he or she is expected to bring in grants to pay for additional equipment needed for the research. Scientific equipment is expensive. For example, a microscope can cost $80,000-$150,000. Smaller instruments such as microtomes, centrifuges, freezers, chromatography and other analytical instrumentation can cost from $4,000 to $80,000. To equip a laboratory for SCI research may cost $500,000 or more.
• Supplies. Supplies refer to disposable or usable items, including glassware, plasticware, paper, surgical supplies, and reagents. The last can be expensive. For example, the cost of materials, antibodies, and chemicals to process a single microscope slide exceed $20 per slide and one may have to obtain as many as 100 slides per animal. A commercial gene chip may cost $1200 to purchase and another $500 of reagents to process. In some cases, the cost of the treatment can be quite high. For example, if the scientist has to prepare the proteins or antibodies, the preparatory costs can be as high as $1000/animal.
• Travel. Scientists must travel to learn and present their work. For example, it costs about $2000 for a member of the research team to attend the Society for Neuroscience meeting. These costs come out of the direct costs of grants. Scientists and postdoctoral fellows may have go elsewhere to take courses to learn new techniques.
• Other costs. These include the cost of telephones, computer communication, animal purchases and maintenance costs are becoming a larger part of SCI research budgets. For example, a rat typically costs about $30 including shipping and handling. Most animal facilities charge up to $1 per diem to house, feed, and maintain a rat. Purchasing and maintaining a rat for 6 months may cost about $300. This is in addition to the labor required to take care of the complications of spinal cord injury, including bladder compression.

Indirect costs include institutional costs for the research, i.e. buildings, electricity, heating and cooling, storage, library, and administrative tasks such as accounting, ordering, record-keeping, and reporting required by grants.

• Buildings for laboratories are more expensive than other types of buildings because of specialized safety, air-handling, and power requirements. A cost of $30 million is considered a low price for a 100,000 square feet of laboratory space, i.e. $300/square feet. The W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience was constructed and furnished at $2.1 million for 9000 square feet, or about $233/square feet, because it used an existing building. Universities have to raise funds for the buildings or pay for mortgage costs if the money is borrowed.
• Air-handling, heating, and cooling. Governmental regulations stipulate high standards of airhandling for laboratories. For example, a laboratory in which animal are studied must have 15 room-air changes per hour. The temperature must be regulated to 22&Mac251;±1&Mac251;C. These two requirements represent significant electrical and heating costs.
• Storage. Usually laboratories require half again as much space for storage. This is because equipment is not used all the time and supplies may be quite space-consuming. Some reagents must also be stored in deep freezers, at -70&Mac251;C while others are stored in regular freezers and refrigerators. For example, at the W. M. Keck Center, we have over 500 cubic feet of freezer and refrigerator storage and we are already running out of space for all the cells and materials.
• Library. Information is the coin of the realm in science. All research institutions have or should have libraries. Libraries cost a fortune to maintain. In addition to a centralized library, most laboratories have a smaller local library. At the Keck Center, for example, we expend over $5000 per year on journals and books and individual faculty may each spend several thousand dollars for subscriptions and online databases.
• Administration. Multiple layers of record-keeping, accounting, ordering, and reporting are required by all institutions. These activities require hundreds of hours of work per grant application and award. It is difficult to estimate, but administrative costs probably account for as much as 50% of the indirect cost. Because university accounting and record-keeping are slow, most laboratories maintain their own administrative records. A large Center may hire an administrator to manage the paperwork, a laboratory manager to order supplies, and other personnel to provide services.

NIH funding fueled much of the growth of the medical school and major research universities of the United States over the last 50 years. SCI research must compete for NIH funding along with thousands of other medical conditions. The competition is fierce. Through the 1990's, only 15-20% of NIH grant applications were funded. With the recent increase in NIH funding, the funding rate has improved to 25%.