Mass General Brigham loses millions in grants under Trump cuts

In February, the administration attempted to cut billions of dollars in overhead expenses for research, such as utilities and the upkeep of laboratories, before a federal judge put that move on pause .
Over the past few weeks, nearly three dozen research programs led by Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital were terminated by the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, according to researchers tracking the cuts.
The deepening Trump administration budget cuts have hit Mass General Brigham, the nation’s largest hospital recipient of research grants, and other Massachusetts universities and hospitals, canceling tens of millions in funding and shutting down medical research programs in areas such as primary care, reproductive health, and pandemic preparedness.
The latest cuts will affect research programs awarded at least $70 million at MGB hospitals’ labs over multiple years, with most of that money already paid but at least $18 million still untapped, a federal document showed, freezing multiple research programs, some in collaboration with other labs within Harvard and at other institutions. But many of the program cuts reported by researchers haven’t yet been disclosed publicly, meaning the actual dollar loss is likely to be higher.
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Far more devastating cuts could loom. On Monday, the Trump administration announced it was reviewing nearly $9 billion in multiyear federal funding commitments to Harvard and its affiliates — which also includes Beth Israel Lahey Health and Boston Children’s Hospital — over allegations that Harvard has inadequately responded to antisemitism. The elimination of some of that funding would add to the slashed research awards that have already occurred, potentially crippling key segments of the local economy.
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While research-funding agencies offered only vague reasons for the cuts, some terminated studies focused on the COVID pandemic or on LGBTQ or transgender health issues, subjects of partisan rancor in the Trump era. It also wasn’t clear whether grant applications are being penalized for stating how they will include women and minorities in their programs, information required by a law passed decades ago.
“We’ve been hit by a wave,” said Dr. Duane Wesemann, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and associate physician at Brigham and Women’s, who got word last week that the NIH canceled funds for the last two years of a five-year, $10 million flagship program he headed on pandemic readiness. “The impact is devastating.”
A spokesperson for NIH released a statement Monday saying the agency “is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and [Department of Health and Human Services] priorities.”
The statement didn’t address how NIH decided to terminate programs. “We remain dedicated to restoring our agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science,” it said.
Researchers at some MGB labs fear the cuts have only begun.
“We are all terrified,” said Dr. Bruce Fischl, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School who runs a neuroimaging lab at Mass. General that develops tools to treat Alzheimer’s. “Every morning when I wake up, I check to see whether our grants have been affected.”
Millions of more dollars have been cut from funding at other Massachusetts research universities and hospitals, including the University of Massachusetts’ Chan Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Medical Center. Many of those research labs are appealing the NIH funding cuts, but in the meantime, their money has stopped coming in.
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Boston Children’s has had five grants terminated, totaling $11.3 million. One was for a program studying how the COVID pandemic affected mental health among LGBTQ people. In its termination note, NIH said the award “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”
“I was shocked and devastated,” said Ariel Beccia, principal investigator on the mental health study and an instructor at the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “If this continues, we are going to lose a generation of scientists.”