SAN DIEGO -- Decreased federal spending on health care research is crimping the nation's biotechnology industry and prompting U.S.-trained, foreign-born scientists to seek better opportunities at home, speakers at a biotechnology conference warned Tuesday.

The Calbio conference in downtown San Diego was sponsored by Biocom, the region's life science industry group.

Speakers lamented the slowdown in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the single largest funder of biomedical research in the country.

After doubling from fiscal year 1999 to $27 billion in 2003, the NIH has slipped, said speakers during a panel discussion moderated by Greg Lucier, chief executive of Carlsbad's Invitrogen Corp. The fiscal year 2006 budget was $28.8 billion, a decrease when inflation is taken into account.

The result, the panel said, is that promising young researchers are being shut out of funding. Some foreign-born researchers are beginning to return to their native countries, which are stepping up biotech spending.

That trend would threaten San Diego's large biomedical industry, which is fueled by discoveries made by biotech scientists. Researchers at UC San Diego, for example, pull in hundreds of millions of dollars in NIH funding annually.

Funding the NIH, Lucier said, is a "long-term investment" in helping cure major diseases. "The cumulative annual cost to our country … of stroke, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's, will be over $750 billion this year alone," he said. "It seems the price the country is paying, relative to the investment, is somewhat disproportionate."

Universities that had expanded buildings and lab spaces to accommodate expected increases in research funding now find themselves in the lurch, said Jon Retzlaff, director of legislative relations for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

"The cost of equipment, the cost of salaries and individuals goes up each year, and NIH is not providing any of that additional funds," Retzlaff said.

Newly minted postdoctoral researchers, who rely on NIH grants to get off the ground, find it tougher to compete, said Janet Lynch Lambert, vice president of governmental relations for Invitrogen. Many researchers here from foreign countries find the scientific climate less inviting than before.

"That's happening here in the U.S., when for the first time, you're starting to see in many countries much more attractive opportunities for folks to return home. We're losing some of the best and brightest who are being lured back with offers in their home country," Lambert said.

The cure, the speakers said, is for biomedical executives and researchers to lobby congressmembers about the importance of increasing funding.

- Contact staff writer Bradley J. Fikes at (760) 739-6641 or bfikes@nctimes.com.