US medical research is on the cliff as President Trump proposes to cut $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health.
Reduced health research may affect clinical research and trials at NIH
The Trump administration hopes to cut health spending next year, and plans to cut the National Institutes of Health’s budget by $18 billion.
- Trump administration officials say they are restoring confidence in public health and reducing waste.
- The university said the Trump administration has marked key research as a diversity, equity and inclusion program and is mistakenly cutting funding.
Fyodor Urnov left the US Soviet Union with a dream more than 35 years ago. Become a scientist and cure the country’s rare disease, a beacon of biomedical research.
Umrov has recently been a key member of a team that uses gene editing techniques to treat “smelling” New Jersey babies born with severe disorders. That breakthrough was funded by the National Institutes of Health, like other decades of medical research he undertook.
But after the Trump administration says it’s being driven by a diversity initiative or a Covid-19 fixture, millions of NIH research have been ingrained in universities across the country. And the rest of the research stands on the cliff as President Donald Trump’s budget proposes cutting $18 billion from NIH next year. This is the biggest reduction for a single government agency.
NIH Grant Money is not sitting in Washington. It focuses on research universities across the country where professors, graduate students and doctors work in life. The schools include prestigious Ivy League institutions such as Harvard University, as well as dozens of lesser-known private and public universities.
“We really hope that we will experience a focused, step-by-step review of how we distribute funding,” Urnov says. “We can’t imagine a future that is not the shining light that American biomedical research guides the world.”
On January 16, a federal judge in Boston said it was illegal for the NIH to cancel research grants over $1 billion under the DEI and revive them. He showed that he could make more drastic decisions in this case as he moved forward. But Trump officials say they are restoring their trust in public health and reducing waste.
“In recent years, Americans have lost confidence in increasingly politicized healthcare and research equipment, where the majority of Americans have moved for years, are obsessed with DEI and Covid,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “The Trump administration is focusing on restoring the gold standard of science, not ideological activity, and ultimately dealing with the chronic disease epidemic.”
University of Texas loses funds for virus catalogue
The University of Texas Medical Chapter in Galveston, which receives approximately $150 million in NIH grants each year, has already lost $19.3 million, according to Scott Weave, director of science at the Galveston National Institute.
Weaver said he is most concerned about the World Reference Center, a collection of thousands of viruses that have been preserved since the 1950s to help scientists conduct emergency research into new virus threats such as the Zika and the West Nile virus. In recent years, this study has focused on Covid-19.
NIH completely ended its Center grant on March 24th. In a letter obtained by USAToday, the institution wrote:
Weaver said framing was wrong. The virus project is not just focused on Covid-19. Historically, the centre has been tackling mosquito-borne viruses, not respiratory viruses. The group pivoted for a short time to help with the pandemic health emergency. He believes the grant was mistakenly eliminated.
“I think it was clear if anyone who understood science read the information about our grants that we were not community grants,” Weaver said.
Dei and the wrong research program
Andy Johns, who manages research grants at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explained a similar situation. The school lost $7.7 million on the end of its NIH contract. He said he started in February but increased his pace in March and April.
Cuts include research on how to improve tobacco control science to reduce health disparities, research to address Covid-19 vaccine hesitations in rural communities, research on teenagers’ peer pressure and neurobiological susceptibility to drug use, and research on malaria in Africa.
“What may stab the most is what gets caught up in because it is perceived as having a specific problem they are not actually involved in. The project may be considered a DEI, but it actually doesn’t have a DEI focus,” Johns said.
Only a small portion of a research project may involve analyzing how research affects a particular demographic, but experts say this is sufficient for the Trump administration to flag grants.
Johns said the professors involved in the reimbursed research asked the NIH to continue the underlying scientific research and simply skip the demographic analysis. However, he said the university has not been very successful in this approach.
Weaver, a Texas researcher, mentioned grants that help students graduate from small universities who have no opportunity to study gain research experience before applying for doctoral studies. He said Nee cut it was Day’s initiative.
Weaver said the grant might technically fit that category, but it was “more opportunity-based.” He lamented the stripping of the program’s campus.
Layoffs in Maryland and California
Daniel Mullins, a health outcome professor at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, said he left five people to reduce the workload for the sixth worker after the NIH told him to stop working on a five-year $9.4 million grant for five years of medical research.
The grant helped Mullins study how to increase patients’ chances of participating in clinical trials – a key step in the approval of new drugs. He describes the program as “Health Equity Hub,” but says there are no people’s illnesses or demographics that are designed to be particularly useful.
Mullins’ biggest challenge is seeing people getting jobs and trying to lose their jobs every day. “I asked the department chairs and deans if they could provide some funding to these people so they could at least find work,” he said.
Kim Elaine Barrett, Associate Dean of Research at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, said her school lost grants aimed at building a biomedical workforce that represents the population. Other fired grants provided scholarships and salaries to graduate students and junior faculty.
Barrett said the school historically received just over $200 million a year from the National Institutes of Health. She said the loss of funds would affect around 100 people.
“If the situation lasts a long time and/or gets worse, you have to start watching layoffs not just for trainees but for the staff in the lab in general,” Barrett said. “Many faculty members withdraw some or all of their salaries from research grants.”
“We wish we had better medicines‘
Dr. Benjamin Singer, vice-chairman of research at Northwestern University, just outside Chicago, said the university was “very elegant” in helping research groups bridge the funding gap to continue their work.
The singer treats patients in the intensive care unit, and some of his studies focus on how certain cells can help reconstruct damaged lungs – studies that benefit people suffering from pneumonia. His group has identified potential prescription drug targets in the future.
“I take care of critically ill patients who are at high risk of dying,” Singer said. “When they stand up to a really tough place, they say, ‘I wish we had better medicines. I wish there was a better treatment to help your mom, your son, your daughter.”
The University of Minnesota reported losing 24 NIH grants in early May, but created a program to help researchers continue their work if funding ends or if a federal government order is suspended.
“But I can’t be clear enough,” said Rebecca Cunningham, the university president. “There is no mitigation on federal fund losses.”
Contribution: Reuters
