The Trump administration blocks important parts of the federal government's device for funding biomedical research and calls for the grant free, but despite an order by federal judges to release the grant, it is still on diseases such as cancer and addiction. It effectively halted many advances in the country's future work.
The blockage outlined in the internal government memo comes from an order that prohibits health authorities from giving public notices to the future grant review council. These notices are ambiguous, but necessary cogs for the machine that creates grants that provide approximately $47 billion a year to research on Alzheimer's disease, heart disease and other diseases.
The procedural holdup, described by NIH officials as indefinitely, has had extensive results. This week, the Grant Review Panel scores were cancelled, creating a gap in funding from the National Institutes of Health. Along with other lapses and proposed changes in NIH funding early in the Trump administration, the delay deepened what scientists call the crisis in American biomedical research.
Columbia University's medical school suspended employment and spending in response to funding shortages. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has frozen employment for non-popular employees. Vanderbilt University is reevaluating the admissions of graduate students. And in an interview, lab leaders said they were pondering and in some cases cut jobs as grant applications declined.
For NIH, the world's largest public funder of biomedical research, the ban on publication of the Grant Review Conference effectively suspends review and approval of future research projects. Government advisors and scientists amounted to an effort to avoid a temporary federal judge's order to stop the White House from blocking billions of dollars in federal grants and loans throughout the Trump administration. He said.
“The new administration has stopped the process of funding domestic biomedical research, both in a wide range of strokes and, in a rather backroom bureaucratic way,” says Vaughn, a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Cooper said.
He had planned to study urinary tract infections in people with long-term catheters. This is a project where expert reviewers gave positive scores in their first review four months ago. However, a high-level review meeting to advance his research and other proposals has been cancelled, putting his work on hold.
An NIH official wrote in an email reviewed by the New York Times on February 7 that the ban on the announcement of the Grant Review Meeting “indefinitely” and “from the HHS level.” , is currently led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The breakdown of the grant review process is the broader Trump administration, not exploiting loopholes to effectively maintain a freeze on presidential blanket spending, despite a judicial order to keep taxpayer dollars flowing. It seemed to reflect the strategy.
Officials from the NIH and Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
The expiration of grantmaking could result in additional drastic changes at the NIH. This will drive spending in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, generating billions of dollars in additional annual economic activity each year.
In an internal email late Friday morning, Dr. Matthew Memory, the agency's representative director, warned employees of “more changes,” saying, “We will be honored to Secretary Kennedy in the coming weeks and months.” “There are many opportunities to show that.”
In the case of American labs that often pay NIH grants to employees, the lapse of funding can be promptly pushed for scientists to dismantle the infrastructure and labor force that supports the experimental line. Masu.
Katie Witkiwitz, a researcher of treatments for substance use disorders at the University of New Mexico, said the expected funding gap already means that one employee will have to let go in the coming months. He said there was.
“NIH just seems frozen,” she said. “People on the ground who do science work will be the first to go, and that devastation may just be happening with delayed funds.”
The halt touches almost every area of science. This week alone, the NIH had scheduled 47 meetings for select experts in a variety of fields to weigh the Grant application, the first phase of the long-term review process. However, 42 of these meetings were cancelled, stalling suggestions to study pancreatic cancer, addiction, brain injury and child health.
The high-level review panel, which is responsible for determining whether to recommend the project, has also been cancelled in recent weeks. The 1972 law does not allow either type of review meeting without being published in the federal register, a government publication. Such notices that normally need to be made public at least 15 days in advance have not been featured on the register since January 21st, the day after President Trump's inauguration.
In a message to scientists serving on a review panel reviewed by The Times, NIH officials said the Federal Register notifications have stopped renewal. They said meetings not announced on the registers have been cancelled. (It appears several meetings have moved ahead as it was announced in the federal registers before the Trump administration took office.)
“What's going on is that they're basically blocking the process. It's not just government, legal measures, but ordering staff not to create grants,” in 8 years, now. , working as a data scientist and administrator at the University of Pittsburgh.
On January 21, in a broader effort by the Trump administration to crack down on communications from federal health agencies, then-HHS representative secretary, Dr. Dorothy Fink, said the employee “published on the federal register.” Instructed not to send. According to a memo reviewed by The Times, it was reviewed and approved by the president's appointee.
Some of the communication pauses appeared to be lifted eventually. However, the Federal Register Notification Meeting remained frozen.
In internal guidance to NIH staff posted on February 10, the agency's leadership, reviewed by The Times, said the announcement of the Federal Registration Conference is “still pending.” Therefore, the guidance states that “these meetings will be cancelled on a daily basis until further guidance is received.”
In addition to the confusion, some of the review panel meetings, which were once open to the public, have been closed for transparency, the guidance said. As a result, the review panel had been cancelled on a massive basis as they did not announce them to the public members who were prohibited from participating anyway.
“It's a caf cask,” Dr. Berg said.
The shutdown of the review panel is just one element of the apparently wider pullback of biomedical research funding. Researchers also report delays in the delivery and reduction of new grant awards money.
The Trump administration has sought to cut taxes allocated to overhead research funds, such as lab maintenance, a plan pending under a federal judge's temporary order.
NIH's compounding difficulties, an estimated 1,200 employees have been rejected as part of Trump's plan to reduce the federal workforce. These layoffs are dependent on probation employees, especially as they hurt some agencies like grant management staff, which they take over more frequently, a former agency official said. .
The NIH is on the clock to spend funds allocated to Congress. Scientists said money that has not been announced by the end of the federal fiscal year in September could be lost.
Additionally, the Grant Review Panel is usually only filled several times a year, exacerbating the impact of recent delays. If the proposal remains frozen for long enough, researchers said they could miss the next phase of the review and put it on hold for six months.
“This crisis – and I'm not overstateing it by calling it a crisis – I'm already consuming one funding cycle,” said Carol Lavonne, a stem cell biologist at Northwestern University. . “But if the blocks published on the registers last much longer, they will engulf two funding cycles, which will cause many labs to go out of business.”
Reported by Jeremy Singer-Vine-Vine.
