[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 74 (Thursday, April 29, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S2365]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. KAINE (for himself, Mr. Moran, Mr. Warner, Mr. Cassidy, 
        Mr. Casey, Mr. Rubio, and Mr. Manchin):
  S. 1521. A bill to require certain civil penalties to be transferred 
to a fund through which amounts are made available for the Gabriella 
Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program at the National Institutes 
of Health, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, 
Education, Labor, and Pensions.
  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President. While cancer is the leading cause of death 
by disease among children past infancy, childhood cancer and other rare 
pediatric diseases remain poorly understood. According to the National 
Cancer Institute, an estimated 15,590 children and adolescents under 
the age of 19 will be diagnosed with cancer, and 1,780 will die of the 
disease in the United States in 2021.
  This is why I am pleased to be introducing the Gabriella Miller Kids 
First Research Act 2.0 with Senators Jerry Moran, Mark R. Warner, and 
Bill Cassidy. The legislation provides a new source of funding for the 
National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Gabriella Miller Kids First 
Pediatric Research Program (Kids First) by redirecting penalties 
collected from pharmaceutical, cosmetic, supplement, and medical device 
companies that break the law to pediatric and childhood cancer 
research. The bill is named in honor of Gabriella Miller, a Leesburg, 
Virginia resident who died from a rare form of brain cancer at the age 
of 10. Gabriella was an activist and worked to raise support for 
research into childhood diseases like cancer until her death in October 
of 2013.
  The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Program has supported 
critical research into pediatric cancer and structural birth defects 
and has focused on building a pediatric data resource combining genetic 
sequencing data with clinical data from multiple pediatric cohorts. The 
Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center is helping to advance 
scientific understanding and discoveries around pediatric cancer and 
structural birth defects and has sequenced nearly 20,000 samples thus 
far. While Congress has appropriated $12.6 million for the Kids First 
program annually since Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, this legislation would 
make additional funding streams available to appropriators to further 
support pediatric and childhood cancer research.
  Gabriella Miller was a passionate activist and fighter. In 2014, I 
was a strong champion of the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act, 
which established the Ten-Year Pediatric Research Initiative at the NIH 
and authorized $12.6 million per fiscal year through FY23. We honor 
Gabriella's memory by continuing her work in making sure pediatric 
disease research is a priority. This bipartisan legislation would 
provide a critical source of funding to improve research in pediatric 
cancer and diseases, and I urge my colleagues to support it.'

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