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Bioscience Funding Confusion Threatens U.S. Innovation
‘With the current turmoil, China could surpass the U.S. in the near future,’ Nobel Prize winner David Baker warns
By Steven Rosenbush, WSJ
March 13, 2025 5:00 am ET
The U.S. stands to save relatively little money by reducing grants to academic research labs, but the costs would spread well beyond campus. Illustration: Thomas R. Lechleiter/WSJ
Uncertainty over federal funding for bioscience programs is endangering U.S. leadership in the field, which could affect drug development and the nation’s competitiveness more widely.
The Trump administration has suffered several adverse court rulings since issuing a memo in January that told federal agencies to pause funding, including a judge’s order this month indefinitely blocking the freeze.
But the situation is still making it difficult for universities to admit graduate students in bioscience, a field that is broadly funded by federal grants through the National Institutes of Health, because of fears that future rulings could go the other way.
Funds for existing grants in the biochemistry department at the University of Washington are flowing normally for now, for example, but scientific research isn’t equipped to cope with funding uncertainty because it needs to be confident that graduate students can be supported throughout their doctoral studies, which typically take about five years, according to Justin Kollman, interim chair of the department and a professor of biochemistry.
His department reacted by reducing its target for this year’s graduate admissions to four people from the typical range of six to eight. Most doctoral programs in the university’s School of Medicine, which houses the biochemistry department, had reductions of 25% to 50% in admitted students this year, according to Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, vice dean of research and graduate education. “Faculty hiring is also slowing, which impacts those finishing postdocs,” she said.
The funding changes would also include a reduction in payments for indirect costs associated with awarded grants such as facilities, administrators and finance people. A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against that effort, too, but Kollman is concerned it could be reversed.
It goes on. The flow of future grants is put at risk by disruption to the review and management of applications as a result of a separate pause, even though some of that order has been lifted.
“And the review process itself is unclear—which grants might be at risk of being defunded is an open question,” Kollman said. “It may be related to the specific content of the grant or, as we have seen recently with the cancellation of federal funding across the board for Columbia University, could arise from factors unrelated to the content of the grant itself.”
The Trump administration canceled roughly $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, alleging the university failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination during pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus last year. The administration was aiming to cut more, but decided to keep some NIH grants intact, The Wall Street Journal reported. Columbia said it would work with the government to restore the funding and said it is committed to combating antisemitism and ensuring the well-being of students.
Kollman said he doesn’t know whether he will be able to hire postdoctoral researchers or staff scientists later this year because the School of Medicine has responded to the precarious state of affairs with a hiring freeze.
The university has also said it would pause hiring of nonessential staff across the board, partly in response to federal policy changes.
The White House and the NIH didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“The current uncertainty is having an unanticipatedly disruptive impact on grad students and postdocs at all levels,” said David Baker, a University of Washington biochemist who won the Nobel Prize last year for his work on designing proteins not found in nature.
In other words, as Baker told me, “It’s chaos.”
The U.S. stands to save relatively little by reducing the flow of grant money into academic research labs, but the costs over time would spread well beyond university campuses, hurting U.S. innovation and competitiveness. Discoveries made by graduate students and postdocs in academic labs are further developed by biotechnology companies, and then, if promising, transferred to pharmaceutical companies that specialize in bringing drug candidates through clinical trials, manufacturing and marketing, according to Baker.
It also threatens very early stage companies in “the Valley of Death,” a phase that occurs after they emerge from the pure research stage and roughly before they are ready for venture capital investment, according to startup founder Ingrid Swanson Pultz.
Bioscience startups at that point sometimes apply for grants that help them survive. “The grants are a lifeline,” said Pultz, who is an adviser at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington.
Some companies are coping with funding uncertainty by slowing their spending or reducing head count, according to Pultz. “The uncertainty is killing them,” she said.
The unpredictability is particularly damaging for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are at critical early stages of their careers, likely driving many away from careers in science, according to Baker. “And whereas in the past, top young scientists have sought to obtain faculty positions in the U.S.,” he said, “the overall uncertainty is making positions in other countries more attractive, including China, which has invested heavily in science during the last 15 years.”
Nathan Greenwood graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and went to work in Baker’s lab. He planned to apply to Ph.D. programs in the U.S., but now he is thinking about other options, given an academic outlook in the U.S. that suddenly seems less secure.
“The federal funding uncertainty is making me rethink my plans for the future,” said Greenwood, a U.S. citizen by birth.
On the global front, China is already the leading country for research output in chemistry, physical sciences, and earth and environmental sciences, and is second for biological sciences and health sciences, according to the most recent Nature Index, a database of articles in science journals.
“With the current turmoil, China could surpass the U.S. in the near future, and we may be buying advanced medicines and other scientific-research-intensive products from Chinese companies in the not too distant future,” Baker said.
Write to Steven Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com
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