Razavi Amir, Rooney Michael K, Fuller Clifton D, Yu James B, Pfister Neil T, Thomas Charles R, Buatti John M, Kamran Sophia C, McGee Heather M, Yeboa Debra Nana, Kiess Ana P, Baschnagel Andrew M, Kimple Randall J
Department of Radiation Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.
Department of Radiation Oncology, St. Francis Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut.
Adv Radiat Oncol. 2025 Apr 22;10(6):101767. doi: 10.1016/j.adro.2025.101767. eCollection 2025 Jun.
Funding to support radiation oncology discovery and research is essential for advancement in therapeutic strategies to improve outcomes for patients with cancer. We aimed to comprehensively characterize trends in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding that supports radiation oncology research over time to identify trends, successes, and areas for improvement.
We queried the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results database to identify all awarded grants to support radiation oncology research conducted by principal investigators at academic centers, using 3 individual years as representative samples (2011, 2016, and 2021). Abstracts and keywords for resulting grants were manually searched to identify resulting awards topically related to the field of radiation oncology; principal investigators departmental affiliation was also used as a supplemental method serving as a sensitivity analysis to define radiation oncology-related research. Descriptive statistics were used to describe patterns in funding. χ testing was used to assess differences in proportions of categorical variables.
Less than 0.5% of the total NIH budget and < 2% of the total National Cancer Institute budget supported radiation oncology research during the representative study years. There were no significant changes in this allocation pattern over time. A small cohort of institutions held a relatively large proportion of NIH-supported radiation oncology grant funding. Individuals holding PhDs alone received the majority of funding (62%), whereas those with dual-degrees (MD/PhD) held 21% of funding, and those with MD alone were awarded 17% of funding. There was a trend toward an increased proportion of grants awarded to MD/PhDs over time (24% vs 15% in 2021 and 2011, respectively, = .075).
Despite radiation therapy's essential role in multidisciplinary cancer care, NIH, and National Cancer Institute funding to support radiation oncology research has remained disproportionally low over the last decade. These data may be useful to inform future policy aimed at promoting research advancement in radiation oncology both at the micro (individual) as well as macro (institutional and national) level.
资助支持放射肿瘤学发现和研究对于推进治疗策略以改善癌症患者的治疗结果至关重要。我们旨在全面描述美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）资助放射肿瘤学研究的趋势，以确定发展趋势、成功之处和改进领域。
我们查询了NIH研究项目在线报告工具支出与结果数据库，以识别学术中心的主要研究者获得的所有支持放射肿瘤学研究的资助，使用3个单独年份作为代表性样本（2011年、2016年和2021年）。对所得资助的摘要和关键词进行人工搜索，以识别与放射肿瘤学领域主题相关的所得奖项；主要研究者的部门隶属关系也用作补充方法，作为敏感性分析来定义与放射肿瘤学相关的研究。使用描述性统计来描述资助模式。χ检验用于评估分类变量比例的差异。
在代表性研究年份中，NIH总预算的不到0.5%以及国家癌症研究所总预算的不到2%用于支持放射肿瘤学研究。随着时间的推移，这种分配模式没有显著变化。一小部分机构获得了相对较大比例的NIH资助的放射肿瘤学研究经费。仅拥有博士学位的个人获得了大部分资助（62%），而拥有双学位（医学博士/哲学博士）的人获得了21%的资助，仅拥有医学博士学位的人获得了17%的资助。随着时间的推移，授予医学博士/哲学博士的资助比例有增加的趋势（2021年和2011年分别为24%和15%，P = 0.075）。
尽管放射治疗在多学科癌症治疗中起着至关重要的作用，但在过去十年中，NIH和国家癌症研究所用于支持放射肿瘤学研究的资金仍然不成比例地低。这些数据可能有助于为未来旨在促进放射肿瘤学在微观（个人）以及宏观（机构和国家）层面研究进展的政策提供参考。
