After much criticism and a false start, the US National Institutes of Health has established its new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and abolished the National Center for Research Resources. The changes came with the approval of an appropriations bill for fiscal year 2012 by Congress and the President on Friday.
NCATS will have a budget of $575 million, according to an NIH news release. That funding is "primarily a reallocation of funds from programs previously located in the NIH Office of the Director, National Human Genome Research Institute, and National Center for Research Resources." NIH adds that it is maintaining its funding ratio for basic and applied research.
NCRR's Web page lists the institutes and centers to which its programs have been moved, and says that NCRR-funded researchers should expect an e-mail from NIH with more information in the coming weeks.