Grant & Growth #4: The End of Cancer Research?

The authors argue that this reduction would not only harm biomedical research institutions but also erode the national research infrastructure, potentially leading to job losses, halted clinical trials, and diminished scientific advancements.

The immediate impact would harm clinical research patients, often those with exhausted treatment options, while the long-term effect would slow medical progress for us all. Furthermore, the jeopardized NIH investment would threaten well-documented broader economic and health benefits, as highlighted in The ASCO Post.

Increased political control, coupled with the application of simplistic heuristics like the "banned word list" (denied by Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya but seen by many, myself included and documented by ProPublica) to eliminate individual grants, and the more recent deployment of the phrase "scientifically unjustifiable," signals a bleak future for the freedom of government funded research.

This last - the “scientifically justifiable” was recently examined by The Atlantic’s Katherine Wu (gift link). Her article critiques the Trump administration’s stance on science funding and data practices at the NIH, arguing that a push to determine research value by “scientifically justified” criteria risks political interference and censorship of essential health research, particularly studies on gender, race, and minority health. It traces how NIH policies and funding decisions have shifted toward narrowing data collection and phasing out studies under political pressures, while highlighting the tension between the rhetoric of “free inquiry” and operational policies that may unlawfully or impractically constrain scientific merit.

ProPublica reports that HHS significantly overshot workforce reduction goals, with 20,500 departures (18% of the workforce, 16% at NIH, including an estimated 3,000 scientists). This figure excludes employees still on administrative leave, who are also likely to be terminated in the future - so there is more to come. The knock on effects on the efficiency of the systems these people managed are likely still emerging.

In a slim sign of hope, the Senate is now trying to constrain the Executive’s ability to decide to ignore spending laws (see NYT gift link), by putting more definitive guidelines into the bills and leaving less to form and precedent, neither of which are concerns of the current Administration. It is a valiant attempt, but likely to be ignored at least in the short term. Perhaps at some point the third branch will step in with a ruling.

I am not sure I have the answer, but I have some ideas.

Individual responses to the current situation are crucial. While the iPEC concept that "nothing has meaning until you ascribe meaning" is difficult to accept wholesale, particularly in the face of global and personal catastrophes, I agree that we control our reactions. Through an ongoing project (still in development) involving conversations with early career scientists impacted by current events, I consistently witness their resilience and dedication to their aspirations. How can we better support each other in this challenging endeavor?

Science also needs a renewed focus on the joy of discovery and creative opportunities it uniquely offers, especially now. We must infuse the struggles of publishing and funding with the passion that drives scientific inquiry. My work at the Night Science Institute aims to achieve this.

What are your ideas? You can leave comments on the web version of this newsletter.

You can find it here: https://tinyurl.com/BiomedFunders. Let me know if you have any feedback - also, please confirm anything you see there on the Funder’s website.

NIH will stop posting NOFOs in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts starting in FY2026 (October 1st, 2025), making grants.gov the sole official source for grant and cooperative agreement funding opportunities, while the NIH Guide remains for policy and informational notices; this aligns with NIH’s broader goal to simplify processes and reduce duplication across federal systems.

While the grants.gov offers a similar search interface, albeit broader, the downside is that new NOFOs will no longer appear in our inboxes on Friday via a subscription to the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts email newsletter. As far as I can work out subscribing to the grants.gov equivalent requires a log in via your home institution.