JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – While 22 states have sued the Trump Administration to temporarily block a major policy change by the National Institute of Health (NIH), there are questions about what would happen to local medical research programs should a judge allow the policy change to proceed.
A majority of medical research is funded by the NIH and on Monday, the NIH would have begun reducing federal funding for medical and public health research.
Research facilities receive grants with 30% of that money from the NIH going towards an indirect cost of research. That indirect cost includes things like personnel, machinery, and the upkeep of the facility itself.
The Trump administration said it found cases of fraud and mismanagement of government money. So to combat that problem, NIH was supposed to slash funding to 15%, which equates to millions of dollars no longer going to an estimated 2,500 medical research programs across the US.
After 22 states sued the Trump administration, a federal judge ordered a temporary freeze on the funding cuts until the judge can determine if the cuts are constitutional. Local medical and clinical research programs like the Jacksonville Center for Clinical Research and the University of Florida medical research program are waiting to see what happens next.
Dr. Michael Koren is the JCCR Director. He spoke with News4AX about what would happen if NIH-funded medical research programs experience a reduction in their funding for indirect costs.
“You threaten to take that money away and for big medical centers, this is now tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, then you got a problem,” said Doctor Koren.
While there is currently an array of viruses, diseases, and new medicines being researched across the US, Dr. Koren said cancer is the one disease that requires the most amount of funding. Coincidentally, the night before NIH funding was slated to be slashed, Pharmaceutical company Pfizer aired a commercial during the Superbowl about a boy beating cancer.
“Pfizer was trying to promote the fact that it’s developing a lot of research and new products in the oncology area of cancer space, “ said Dr. Koren.
The NIH budget is $48 billion, making it the largest source of medical research funding in the US. A majority of that money goes toward the discovery of how certain viruses and diseases work and how new medications may combat those illnesses. Koren said major research programs that are part of the discovery phase of research would immediately feel the effects of a reduction in funding.
The University of Florida has a major medical research program. A university spokesperson released a written statement that said, in part: "University leadership is monitoring these developments closely and is working toward, and is supportive of, favorable resolutions."
A smaller fraction of NIH money goes to clinical research facilities like the JCCR where research involves patients who sign up to be a part of a clinical trial after new medications have been deemed safe to try on humans. Clinical research also receives funding from other non-governmental sources. The reduction in federal funding will not immediately affect the Jacksonville Center for Clinical Research, but Koren said somewhere down the line, the facility would be impacted.
“We do a lot of first-in-human trials here. When we get a product that’s a first-in-human product, it’s already been studied for five years or more. So if you shut off that spigot of innovation, then we don’t get those projects. So, it can be an issue for us down the road,” Koren said.
On the flipside, Koren also said he understands the Trump Administration’s reasoning for reducing federal funding for research after the administration brought up issues of fraud and mismanagement of federal dollars.
“There are concerns that some things that are overhead related to research may be related to other things or using the facility for things other than research,” Koren said.
Last year, there were several reports of fraud linked to medical research programs across the US. In May of last year, the Cleveland Clinic paid $7.6 million to the Dept. of Justice to settle allegations of fraud that was linked to an application for financial assistance for research.