AURORA — Researchers at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus have lost two scientific grants since President Donald Trump returned to office, but worry they’ll lose both money and their future colleagues if federal grant funding upheaval continues.
The two grants total about $1.7 million. One is to study vaccine hesitancy in Alaskan Native communities, and the other is a partnership with Columbia University to study the link between diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.
The National Institutes of Health are the world’s largest funder of medical research, distributing $35 billion in in grants in 2023.
In February, the Trump administration ordered the institutes to halt meetings to review about $1.5 billion in upcoming grants. It also announced that only 15% of grant funding could go for indirect costs, such as maintaining equipment and providing information technology support to labs, though a federal judge temporarily blocked that order. Supporters of the policy said limiting overhead spending would make more money available for research, while critics said it would make some types of labs impossible to fund.
The NIH has terminated grants to study vaccine hesitancy and uptake; for work at Columbia University, because of anti-Israel student protests; and for research in South Africa, because the administration believes the country is persecuting white citizens.
Some scientists also have reported receiving feedback that they shouldn’t pursue grants for research involving mRNA vaccines. The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, which saved an estimated 3 million lives, use mRNA technology.
Greg Ebel, director of Colorado State University’s Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, said he doesn’t know of any other local projects that have definitively lost their funding, but uncertainty about government support for research will push young people out of the field. He spoke during a roundtable Tuesday on the Anschutz campus with Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat.
“Nobody knows what to expect,” Ebel said.
Other researchers who spoke said the pharmaceutical industry and foreign powers would try to scoop up young people who couldn’t find funding for their research. Without their work, the United States could lose out on the kinds of advances that now allow most children with cancer to grow up, said Dr. Lia Gore, an oncologist who conducts clinical trials at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
“Fifty years ago, childhood cancer was uniformly fatal. There were no survivors,” she said.
Thomas Morrison, who is working on new vaccines and antiviral treatments on the Anschutz campus, said his department paused hiring while leaders sort out whether the NIH will continue funding their work. They’re trying to develop vaccines and treatments that work on multiple types of viruses, in the hope of having something that will work if a new type of flu caused a pandemic, for example.
“We may have funding, but it’s not clear that’s going to be there tomorrow,” he said.
Judy Regensteiner, who also works on the Anschutz campus, said she worries the grant that funds her work could disappear. The grant covers the salaries of young researchers working in women’s health, though Regensteiner’s work on sex differences in diseases such as diabetes affects both women and men, she said.
“It’s the uncertainty that’s so hard right now,” she said. “It’s painful to me, and especially to the early-career scientists” funded by the grant.
Hickenlooper said he believes Congress will push back against deep cuts to research, because significant numbers of Republicans support medical science, though no one has put together a bill or framework to get the NIH grants flowing again. The system of federal grants for research at universities allowed the United States to lead the world in science, he said.
“You’ve got to continue the investments that have got you there,” he said.
If the country doesn’t fund basic science, it will lose the ability to respond quickly to emergencies, Ebel said.
His lab is studying how to control mosquitoes with less insecticide, and has equipment that nearby counties can use to monitor for West Nile virus in their mosquito populations. Early in the pandemic, they repurposed it to test nursing home workers for COVID-19, possibly saving lives by preventing them from bringing the virus to vulnerable people, he said.
Basic research “gives us the ability to be creative and flexible and nimble in the face of threats,” he said.
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