Cancer researchers examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early breast cancer. Pediatricians who monitor the long -term health of children born to mothers who have been infected by Koronai during pregnancy. Scientists looking for links between diabetes and dementia.
All of these projects at Columbia University were paid by federal research grants that ended abruptly after Trump’s decision to reduce $ 400 million in Columbia funding for concerns about the treatment of Jewish students.
Dozens of medical and scientific studies They are finished or at risk of ending, letting researchers try to find alternative funding. In some cases, researchers have already begun to inform the study issues that the research is suspended.
“Honestly, I wanted to cry,” said Kathleen Graham, a 56 -year -old nurse in Bronx when he learned that the study of diabetes he had participated for a quarter of a century It’s over.
At Columbia Medical School, doctors said they were shocked as they received alerting that their funding was terminated. Some expressed the resignation, while others demanded a stopgap solution and asked if the university could fund some of the personal for the projects in the short term, according to interviews with five doctors or teachers who had been influenced.
“The most urgent need is to bridge in the short term and understand what the long -term plans are,” said Dr. Dawn Hershman, the temporary head of the division of hematology and oncology at Columbia Medical School. “This is what is being processed.”
About $ 250 million out of $ 400 million in cuts imposed this month included funding by National Institutes of Health. Every year, NIH distributes billions of dollars to fund research at universities for biomedical and behavioral research. These grants are an important medical progress engine – and, for many scientists and medical researchers, successful careers.
In interviews, several Columbia researchers who received a grant cancellation announcements last week and half said they were supposed that their canceled grants were part of the $ 400 million cuts announced by the Trump administration. But they said they had no way to know – a reflection of chaos and uncertainty that floods laboratories and clinics throughout the nation.
Last year, Columbia became the focus of a national student protest against the Gaza war. Pre-Palestinian protesters established a camp on campus and occupied a university building. Some Jewish students said they experienced harassment by walking around or near the campus or were ostracized. The university president asked the police station to clarify the protesters and later resigned from mania to handle the divided campus.
Trump’s administration accused the University of Columbia, saying he did very little. Citing the federal law against discrimination, it has reduced the funding of research in Columbia.
In addition to reducing research grants, Trump administration has abolished funding for clinical scholarships for early career doctors who develop a specialty in oncology and many other areas. Other grants have eliminated money to hire research nurses and other support staff required for clinical trials, Dr. Hershman said.
Sudden, deep cuts seem to be extremely rare, if not unprecedented. Some legal scholars say that administration tactics may violate the first amendment and that the government seems to have ignored the procedures and restrictions defined in the same law against the discrimination he said. Since announced the cuts, Trump’s administration has asked Columbia to make dramatic changes in student discipline and to put an academic department in forced management as a prerequisite for the negotiations “on the continuing financial relationship of the university” by the University of the United States.
The cuts will be felt more immediately by researchers scientists and doctors, many of whom work mainly at Columbia Medical School and the connected hospital, Newyork-Presbyterian/Columbia, about 50 squares north of the central campus of Columbia.
In interviews, they shocked and saddened that their research works were so abrupt. Dr. Olajide A. Williams, a neurologist and professor at Columbia Medical School, had two grants that ended this month.
His research often focuses on health inequalities and how to limit them.
One grant was to study factors that led to a better stroke recovery between poor and socially disadvantaged patients. Another grant explored how to increase opinions for colon cancer – which is growing among the younger adults – throughout New York.
“As I sit here trying to do this work, I really believe in the right mistake with another wrong frays the fabric of justice,” Dr. Williams said. “The fight against the horror of anti -Semitism by punishing the courtesy of research on health inequalities creates a cycle of injustice that causes pain in all sides.”
He said he was anesthetized.
“At the moment, I was sitting in this pain by trying to tour what happened exactly in the portfolio of my grants,” he said.
More than 400 grants at the University of Columbia were terminated, according to National Institutes of Health. Some of the grant cancellations will be felt far beyond Columbia. Large -scale studies can include researchers in various universities, but for administrative ease, the grant is associated with a single university. As a result, the cuts have jeopardized some research projects that concern many universities.
Last week Dr. David M. Nathan, Professor of Harvard Medical School, learned that funding for the diabetes research program – after a group of 1,700 people for more than 25 years – had been cut.
“Funding flows through Columbia, so we were vulnerable,” Dr. Nathan said. “When NIH, or anyone who made that decision, decided to target Columbia’s funding, we were just swept on it.”
This research program had been developed by a milestone study that demonstrated the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions and metformin drug to reduce type 2 diabetes. These findings were released in 2001. Dr. Nathan and others followed the same participants in the next quarter. The last phase, which was funded through Columbia, searched for ties between diabetes and dementia.
Ms Graham, the nurse in Bronx, said that she had recently undergone testing and had been analyzed her gait for early signs of any neurological problems. Over the years, he said, he has been proud of the production of data that highlight the advice they give to other medical professionals in patients with diabetes.
Dr. Nathan said the last phase was two years in a five -year study.
“This is also a colossal waste,” he said. “We haven’t collected all the data we hoped to collect.”
Dr. Jordan Orange, who is head of the Department of Pediatrics in Columbia Medical School said that a project that lost funding included the search for a nasal spray that would prevent viruses from entering and reduce infections.
“How wonderful would it be if we had a nasal spray that could prevent viruses?” Dr. Orange said.
According to Lucky Tran, a representative of the Medical Center of Columbia University, other canceled studies include one that focuses on reducing maternal mortality in New York and another for treatments for chronic diseases, including Long Covid.
Last week, the researchers were trying to record which the research had lost funding and which projects survived. “We are still in the process trying to understand all the grants,” Dr. Hershman said.
