‘We are all terrified': Mass General Brigham to lose millions in medical research grants under Trump cuts

Boston Globe

01-04-2025

The latest cuts will affect research programs awarded at least $70 million at MGB hospitals' labs over multiple years, with most of that money already paid but at least $18 million still untapped, a federal
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Far more devastating cuts could loom. On Monday, the Trump administration
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While research-funding agencies offered only vague reasons for the cuts, some terminated studies focused on the COVID pandemic or on LGBTQ or transgender health issues, subjects of partisan rancor in the Trump era. It also wasn't clear whether grant applications are being penalized for stating how they will include women and minorities in their programs, information required by a law passed
'We've been hit by a wave,' said Dr. Duane Wesemann, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and associate physician at Brigham and Women's, who got word last week that the NIH canceled funds for the last two years of a five-year, $10 million flagship program he headed on pandemic readiness. 'The impact is devastating.'
A spokesperson for NIH released a statement Monday saying the agency 'is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and [Department of Health and Human Services] priorities.'
The statement didn't address how NIH decided to terminate programs. 'We remain dedicated to restoring our agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science,' it said.
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Researchers at some MGB labs fear the cuts have only begun.
'We are all terrified,' said Dr. Bruce Fischl, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School who
Millions of more dollars have been cut from funding at other Massachusetts research universities and hospitals, including the University of Massachusetts' Chan Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Medical Center. Many of those research labs are appealing the NIH funding cuts, but in the meantime, their money has stopped coming in.
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Boston Children's has had five grants terminated, totaling $11.3 million. One was for a program studying how the COVID pandemic affected mental health among LGBTQ people. In its termination note, NIH said the award 'no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.'
'I was shocked and devastated,' said Ariel Beccia, principal investigator on the mental health study and an instructor at the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 'If this continues, we are going to lose a generation of scientists.'
"If this continues, we are going to lose a generation of scientists," said Ariel Beccia, an instructor at the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has had her NIH funding terminated.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Wesemann's lab was exploring the viability of a vaccine that could fight all coronaviruses, not just COVID-19. At another Brigham and Women's lab run by principal investigator Dr. Abraam Yakoub, the team was studying the root causes of 'long COVID,' including neurological problems lasting long after the infection appears to pass. Both labs received letters from NIH saying their funding was no longer needed because 'the [COVID] pandemic is over.'
In an appeal, Wesemann argued that his research was meant to study the immune system to develop a vaccine that could protect people against a future coronavirus pandemic, not specifically for COVID.
'COVID won't be the last coronavirus to go into humans,' he said. 'There's a continued worry about other coronaviruses and other viruses that will jump into humans and cause havoc. I said, 'The whole point of this research is that the questions have not been answered.''
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Yakoub, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's, took issue with the NIH assertion that the pandemic is over, noting that COVID
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'To us, as scientists who have dedicated their lifetime to research, each of these research projects is like our very own babies,' he said. 'Each big discovery we make is five or more years of our lifetime. This is my life's mission and what I live for — to understand why disease happens and/or find ways to treat it.'
For the past century, money from agencies such as the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been the lifeblood of medical research, bankrolling the basic discoveries that underpin lifesaving therapies such as vaccines and cancer drugs.
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While funding levels have ebbed and flowed in the past, the Trump administration cuts are 'entirely unprecedented and vicious beyond any precedent,' said Don Berwick, the former administrator of the
Berwick said Massachusetts labs are being disproportionately hurt because the state has 'been not just a national, but an international leader in biomedical research for decades.'
The full impact of the cuts on Mass General Brigham, which drew more than $655 million in NIH funding at Mass. General and more than $388 million at Brigham and Women's last year, wasn't clear.
In a recent federal document, NIH only listed as terminated about seven grants to the hospitals, though researchers say there are far more canceled
awards not yet reflected on the document. Most are for multiyear research programs in which some or most of the funding was already paid. Some were in collaboration with other hospitals that drew part of the funding.
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Ellie Dehoney, senior vice president of policy and advocacy at the nonpartisan alliance
'Those are the last grants you want to see terminated,' she said. 'That is throwing good money away. That's not something anyone wants to see.'
Data from outside researchers tracking funding cuts nationally suggest their economic impact is already being felt. Federal cuts have
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NIH grant cuts have come in waves since late February and appear to be broadening with each passing week. Initially, they were focused on projects related to the health of transgender and LGBTQ people. More recently, NIH is canceling scores of studies related to COVID-19.
Alan Sager, a Boston University professor of health law, policy, and management, said he has been surprised by the 'lack of public uproar' over the NIH rollbacks. The cuts 'don't appear to be backed by an overriding goal,' he said. 'It feels like policy by muscle spasm.'
Robert Weisman can be reached at