NIH CUTS TARGET vaccine -zelger -research and mrNA technology could be next: NPR

The Trump government reduces long-term research areas that are financed by the National Institutes of Health, and claims that they no longer agree on the agency’s priorities.

The latest goal?

Millions of dollars of NIH subsidies for examining the vaccine and improving the immunization level. It is particularly relevant that a measles outbreak inspires the southwest in the middle of the falling vaccination rates.

In the past few weeks, scientists across the country have started to preserve letters in which their existing grants have already given – which have already been granted in a competitive process.

First of all, the cuts primarily seemed to goals research on LGBTQ+ Health and other areas, which were classified in conflict with the executive commands by President Trump to gender and “diversity, justice and inclusion”.

Now more than 40 subsidies in connection with the hesitation of vaccines have been canceled, and there are increasing concerns that research on mRNA vaccines can be on the chopping of the mincing.

NPR received information about the changes from two NIH employees and a person who was familiar with the activities of NIH, who applied for anonymity because they were not justified to speak publicly. And NPR checked e -mails and documents that you have provided.

“I would like to underline how unprecedented – how abnormal is,” a long -time Nih officer told NPR. “We don’t work that way.”

An e -mail this week in the NIH leadership circulated a list of grants that should be ended, and details about the specific language that is to be used in these communications. “It is NIH’s policy not to prioritize research activities that are geared to gain scientific knowledge of why individuals hesitate to be vaccinated and/or to examine ways to improve vaccine and commitment,” says the e -mail.

It is unclear how many grants were canceled under the Trump administration. Neither the NIH nor the mother agency, the Ministry of Health and Human Services, answered the request from NPR for comment.

“It seems that there are forces that can destroy our existing vaccine company,” says Dr. Jonathan TemteProfessor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin, who hesitates vaccine. “Defundation of research over vaccines is the latest example of these efforts.”

MRNA research can be at risk

In what some see on the agency as a threatening sign, the incumbent director of the NIH also called for information about the financing that supports MRNA vaccine research, technology that underpins the Covid 19 recordings of Moderna and Pfizer-Biontech, according to an email that was checked by NPR. A similar call for data was preceded by the end of the other vaccine grants.

“Nih employees are very concerned internally that the MRNA grants are followed and ended by the result of the hesitation of vaccines,” said one of the NIH employees who were not entitled to speak publicly. “There are widespread concerns that this limits the ability to combat pandemics and to stop promising life -saving cancer treatments.”

NPR checked the NIH list of 130 of these awards, which were issued by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases or Niaid and which financed most MRNA research. This includes the efforts to develop vaccines for a variety of diseases, including Lyme disease, dengue and sometimes life-threatening gastrointestinal infection Clostridium difficile.

Other parts of the NIH, like the National Cancer Institute, also finance this work because MRNA technology promises targeted cancer treatment.

“I’m constantly on pens and needles,” I says Justin RichnerAssociate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “I’m really waiting for the shoe to search for the e -mail that says that the grant has been canceled.”

The 4-year-old NIH scholarship from Richner is on the internal list of the agency. His laboratory works on the development of a mRNA

“It is an insolent idea in the way the NIH manages the money that was acquired by the congress,” says Dr. Dr. Harold VarmusA Nobel Prize Professor for Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, which was headed by the NIH from 1993 to 1999.

Aaron SchererA researcher at the University of IOWA who studies vaccines says that his subsidies are not canceled so far that he is assumed that Nih will not be financed his future proposal “regardless of his scientific and health earnings”.

Health differences and LGBTQ+ research loses ground

Vaccination research is only the latest goal in the growing efforts of the Trump government to cut researchers financed by NIH.

A first wave of letters went to the researchers last month, who notified them that their grants were canceled because they did not match the executive orders of President Trump.

Termination letters that were checked by the NPR state “no change in the project could align the project with the priorities of the agency”, but a current NIH employee noted NPR that the research assistants of the institute, who are responsible for making this determination, were not consulted. “You don’t check with us,” said the person, adding that this termination decisions would come practically without notice.

According to an internal memo, the NIH employees were instructed to separate awards into different categories, depending on whether the “sole purpose of the project is related” or could still be practical when changing.

The guidelines also have an impact on hundreds of awards in the coming months, since many “communications about financing options” have been taken, and grants that were used by these communications will also not receive their financing, the NIH employee told NPR.

Brittany Charltonwhich leads the LGBTQ Health of Excellence Center of Excellence at Harvard University says that she has achieved two dozen awards that have ended under her colleagues for work that touch the topics such as HIV prevention and Alzheimer’s.

The cuts not only influence research on LGBTQ+ population, but also in other endangered communities, she says.

“We do not study Fringe problems and they are not ideological at all,” says Charlton, “Research, which is currently being terminated abruptly by the Federal Government, should really determine what is the basis for some of these differences and help to address them.”

Do you have any information that you would like to communicate about the ongoing changes in the federal government? Contact these authors via encrypted communication: Will Stone @Wstonereportts.95 and Rob Stein @Robstein.22.