The Trump administration has recently implemented a policy that blocks key components of the federal government's funding apparatus for biomedical research. This move has effectively halted progress on significant research projects targeting illnesses such as cancer and addiction, despite a federal judge's order to release grant money.
The blockage originates from an order that forbids health officials from giving public notice of upcoming grant review meetings. These notices are an essential but often overlooked step in the grant-making process that annually allocates approximately $47 billion to research on conditions like Alzheimer's and heart disease. Without these notices, the machinery of funding is disrupted.
This procedural delay, described as indefinite in internal emails from National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) officials, has had significant repercussions. Numerous grant review panels were canceled, causing a funding gap from the N.I.H. This issue, combined with other funding lapses and proposed changes earlier in the Trump administration, has deepened what many scientists are calling a crisis in American biomedical research.
The funding shortfall has forced Columbia University’s medical school to pause hiring and spending. Similarly, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has frozen the hiring of non-faculty employees, and Vanderbilt University is reassessing graduate student admissions. Laboratory leaders have expressed concerns in interviews, with some contemplating and even executing job cuts as grant applications remain stalled.
As the world's largest public funder of biomedical research, the N.I.H. has been significantly affected by this ban on announcing grant review meetings. This has effectively paused the vetting and approval of future research projects. Government advisers and scientists argue that this amounts to an attempt to circumvent a federal judge’s temporary order, which demanded that the White House cease blocking the release of billions in federal grants and loans across the Trump administration.
“The new administration has, both in broad strokes and in rather backroom bureaucratic ways, stopped the processes by which the N.I.H. funds biomedical research in the nation,” said Vaughn Cooper, a microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh.
