AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Science advocates celebrated a rare bipartisan victory early this year. Congress restored billions of dollars of research money to the federal budget, reversing cuts proposed by the Trump administration. But these same advocates now say the administration is finding other ways to withhold that money. NPR's Katia Riddle explains.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: When the Trump administration tried to slow or delay billions of dollars in funding for the National Institutes of Health, longtime former NIH employee Jeremy Berg took it personally.
JEREMY BERG: NIH has been part of my life for the past - going on - five decades.
RIDDLE: Berg has had a lot of different roles at the NIH, including eight years as a director at one of the agency's major research institutes. He credits the institution with fostering much of the progress in biomedical research in the past few decades - things like mapping the human genome, major advances in cancer care or new therapies for HIV and AIDS. Berg recalls something a Republican senator once told him about the agency.
BERG: He used to refer to it not just as the crown jewel in biomedical research, but as the crown jewel in the federal government. And I think one can make a pretty strong case for that.
RIDDLE: That's why when NIH came under attack from the Trump administration, Berg took it upon himself to become a watchdog for the agency. In 2026, Berg says the budget may look intact on paper, but the NIH has switched the strategy to making fewer grants with more money over more years. Berg says it's an accounting shift that means fewer scientists are getting grants.
BERG: There's a lot of pain and a lot of science that isn't going to get done.
RIDDLE: Berg's analysis shows 2,300 new grants made at one point in 2026 - half of the number at the same point in the previous year. Berg is not the only former NIH employee that's taken on this role. Elizabeth Ginexi was a program officer at the NIH for 22 years.
ELIZABETH GINEXI: I'm sadly watching the agency where I worked for so many years be dismantled.
RIDDLE: She left because she feared being let go under this administration. Ginexi recently analyzed something on the NIH website called forecasts - areas of research the agency would like to fund. It gives direction to scientists who are applying for research money.
GINEXI: There are tons of them starting from last year, in 2025, that are still sitting as forecasts and were never published.
RIDDLE: Ginexi's research shows that of 336 NIH funding forecasts still listed as open, 205 were already past their promised posting date with no full announcement ever published. It's a way she says of giving the illusion that these opportunities still exist, even though they may never materialize. All of this delay trickles down to scientists like Rachael Sirianni. She's at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, looking at the NIH website.
RACHAEL SIRIANNI: OK. This was submitted in February and...
RIDDLE: Sirianni is a cancer researcher. She's checking on a grant she submitted months ago. Now the date for its review has been pushed back.
SIRIANNI: And so the chances of that grant being funded in 2026 are basically zero.
RIDDLE: Sirianni works on pediatric cancer. She's had to delay or end a lot of her work because of this NIH funding loss. In her lab, she looks at one bench that is full of equipment - reagent bottles and pipettes.
SIRIANNI: This particular bench was occupied by a member of my laboratory that was doing drug screening studies that, unfortunately, I had to both lay that person off and close that line of research entirely in my lab. I can't bring myself to clear his bench. It makes me sad.
RIDDLE: Sirianni works on finding solutions specifically for cancer in children that has metastasized to the surfaces of the brain and the spinal cord.
SIRIANNI: It's thin, and it's across the soft tissues of the brain and spinal cord. So there isn't really a consistent neurosurgical solution to that cancer complication.
RIDDLE: One line of research she was working on - a promising combination of drugs.
SIRIANNI: Kind of like a one-two punch, where we could put the two drugs together and see that they were dramatically more potent.
RIDDLE: She had to end this work when the funding dried up. In response to her concerns and those laid out by other researchers in this story, a spokesperson from HHS, Andrew Nixon, acknowledged the slowdown in funding but blamed it on the Democrats. Nixon wrote that, quote, "timelines have returned to typical funding patterns," end quote. Sirianni says for her, it's too late. She doesn't see how she'll be able to restart this study.
SIRIANNI: That means that the therapeutic development work that taxpayers previously invested in is now hitting a brick wall. And, you know, even as just a citizen of the country, this frustrates me. It's a loss of investment. It's a loss of momentum. For the families that have children that are affected by these tumors, every month, every week, that matters to them.
RIDDLE: Saving kids with cancer is a goal that U.S. scientists have advanced significantly in recent decades. Sirianni says in order to keep those breakthroughs coming, the federal government has to continue investing in science. Katia Riddle, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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