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The trickle-down effect of President Trump's massive NIH budget cuts
The trickle-down effect of President Trump's massive NIH budget cuts U.S. medical research is at a precipice as President Trump proposes cutting $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health.
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Cuts to health research could impact clinical studies and trials at the NIH
The Trump administration wants to cut health spending in the coming year, and plans to cut the budget at the National Institutes of Health by $18 billion.
Trump administration officials say they are restoring trust in public health and cutting waste.
Universities said the Trump administration is marking important studies as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and mistakenly cutting their funding.
Fyodor Urnov left the Soviet Union for the United States more than 35 years ago with a dream: To become a scientist and cure rare diseases in the country that was a beacon for biomedical research.
Umrov recently was a key member of a team that used gene editing technology to treat a 'stinking cute' New Jersey baby born with a severe disability. That breakthrough, like decades of other medical research he's done, was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
But millions of dollars in NIH research has now ground to a halt at universities across the country after the Trump administration cut studies it says are driven by diversity initiatives or a fixation on COVID-19. And the remaining research stands at a precipice as President Donald Trump's budget proposes cutting $18 billion from the NIH next year – the largest cut to any single government agency.
NIH grant money doesn't sit in Washington – it gets funneled down to research universities across the country, where professors, graduate students, and doctors do their life's work. The schools include prestigious Ivy League institutions, such as Harvard University, and dozens of lesser-known private and public colleges.
'I really hope that we're going through a focused, phased of review of how funding is distributed,' Urnov said. 'I just cannot imagine a future where American biomedical research is not the shining light that leads the world.'
On Jan. 16, a federal judge in Boston said NIH's cancellation of more than $1 billion in research grants on the basis of DEI was illegal and reinstated them. He signaled he could issue a more sweeping decision in the case as it moves forward. But Trump officials say they are restoring trust in public health and cutting waste.
'In recent years, Americans have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago,' Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement. 'The Trump administration is focused on restoring the Gold Standard of Science – not ideological activism … to finally address our chronic disease epidemic.'
Texas university loses virus catalog funding
The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which receives about $150 million in NIH grants annually, has already lost $19.3 million, according to Scott Weave, the scientific director for Galveston National Laboratory.
Weaver said he's most concerned about the World Reference Center, a collection of thousands of viruses that has been preserved since the 1950s to help scientists conduct emergency research into new viral threats, such as Zika or West Nile virus. In recent years, the research focused on COVID-19.
NIH terminated the center's grant funding in full on March 24. In a letter obtained by USA TODAY, the agency wrote: 'These grant funds were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary.'
Weaver said that framing is incorrect. The project on viruses isn't just focused on COVID-19. Historically, the center worked on mosquito-borne viruses, not respiratory ones. The group only pivoted briefly to help with the pandemic health emergency. He believes the grant was eliminated in error.
'I think it would've been clear if anyone with an understanding of science had read the information about of our grant that we were not a COVID grant,' Weaver said.
Research programs mistaken for DEI
Andy Johns, who administers research grants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, described a similar situation. The school lost $7.7 million in NIH contract terminations, which he said began in February but picked up pace in March and April.
The cuts include a study on how to improve tobacco regulatory science to reduce health disparities, a study to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in rural communities, a study on neurobiological susceptibility to peer pressure and drug use among teenagers, and a study on malaria in Africa.
'The ones that might sting the most are ones that get caught up because they're perceived as being involving a particular issue that they don't actually involve – where a project may have been deemed as DEI, but there's actually not a DEI focus in any way shape or form,' Johns said.
Sometimes, only a small portion of a research project involves analyzing how research affects a specific demographic, experts said, but this has been enough for the Trump administration to flag the grant as DEI.
Johns said professors involved in the defunded studies asked NIH to let them continue the underlying scientific research and simply omit the demographic analysis. But the university hasn't haven't seen much success with this approach, he said.
Weaver, the Texas researcher, mentioned a grant that helped students who graduated from small colleges that lack research opportunities get research experience before applying to PhD programs. He said NIH cut that on the grounds it was a DEI initiative.
Weaver said that while the grant may have technically fit into that category, it was 'more opportunity-based.' He lamented what stripping the campus of the program means: 'I've really taken a lot of pleasure in seeing them succeed and go on and thrive as scientists.'
Layoffs in Maryland and California
Daniel Mullins, a health outcomes professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, said he laid off off five people and reduced the workload of a sixth worker after NIH told them to stop work on a five-year, $9.4 million grant for a health care study.
The grant helped Mullins study how to make patients more likely to participate in clinical trials − a vital step in the approval of new medicines. He describes the program as a 'health equity hub,' but says there's no one disease or demographic of people it is specifically designed to help.
Mullins' biggest challenge has been walking into work every day and seeing people who are about to lose their jobs. 'I asked the department chair and the dean if we could just fund these people a little bit so they could at least find a job,' he said.
Kim Elaine Barrett, the vice dean of research at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, said her school lost grants aimed at building a biomedical workforce that is more representative of the population. Other terminated grants provided stipends and salaries for 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 funding loss affects about 100 people.
"If the situation continues for much longer, and/or gets worse, then we will have to start looking at layoffs, and not just for trainees, but for lab personnel in general," Barrett said. "A lot of faculty derive some or all of their salaries from research grants."
'I wish we had better medications'
At Northwestern University, just outside of Chicago, Dr. Benjamin Singer, the vice chair for research in the Department of Medicine, said the university has been 'very gracious' in helping his research group fill in the funding gaps to keep his research group's work going.
Singer treats patients in the intensive care unit, and some of his research focuses on how a specific cell can help rebuild a damaged lung – research that can benefit people suffering from pneumonia. His group also identifies targets for potential future prescription drugs.
'I take care of critically ill patients at a high risk of dying,' Singer said. 'When they're really up against a tough spot, I think, 'I wish we had better medications. I wish we had better therapies to help your mom, your son, your daughter.''
The University of Minnesota, which reported losing 24 NIH grants as of early May, created a program to help researchers continue their work if their funding was terminated or they received a stop-work order from the federal government.
'I just can't be clear enough, however," said Rebecca Cunningham, the university's president. "There is no mitigation for the loss of federal funding.'
Contributing: Reuters
