Dr. Sterling Johnson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison speaks at a forum on NIH funding cuts conducted by U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday. (Photo courtesy of Sen. Tammy Baldwin's office)

Drastic funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have disrupted biomedical research, potentially setting back projects that could advance treatment and prevention efforts for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other major causes of illness and death, researchers and patients told Democratic Senators Wednesday.

“We are hearing from researchers, research institutions, and patients about the ongoing attacks on NIH,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), at the start of a  two-and-a-half hour forum she chaired as the ranking Democrat on a Senate subcommittee that oversees NIH.

“Understandably, most are reluctant to publicly speak out because the Trump administration is actively extorting institutions of all types, including major research universities,” Baldwin said. “This administration is seeking to dismantle the NIH and destroy the hopes of millions of Americans who are counting on life-saving treatments and cures.”

Witnesses who testified Wednesday warned that with projects being canceled in midstream, years of research data would likely be wasted and the role of the NIH as the world’s leading funder of biomedical research was at risk of being displaced.

NIH-funded advances have contributed to reductions in death rates from cancer, heart attacks and stroke in the U.S., said Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, who was director of NIH in the Biden administration and stepped down in January.

“This progress would not have happened without taxpayer support,” Bertagnolli said.

But in the first two months of the Trump administration, she said, more than 300 grants have been terminated and $1.5 billion in funding has been delayed.

In the last year, Bertagnolli told Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), NIH identified women’s health as “a high priority area” and “launched many new programs to really begin to address the deficiencies that we’ve had in women’s health.” Since the change in administration, however, “nothing new has moved forward.”

Dr. Sterling Johnson, the associate director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a professor at the University of Wisconsin, said NIH funding over the last two decades helped make it possible to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease through blood tests and brain imaging scans rather than having to wait until after the patient’s death to be certain.

The NIH also funded clinical trials on surgical procedures involving the brain that can slow symptoms of the condition, he said, as well as trials on potential preventive therapies.

“These discoveries are changing the way we diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s and related causes of dementia,” Johnson said, but there is growing concern about how to sustain those gains.

In the last few months, he said, there have been delays in peer review and funding approvals for some projects.

“There are proposed cuts that threaten major ongoing studies, including treatment trials, risking the loss of millions of dollars already invested and setting our patients back,” Johnson said. With cuts threatening to slow down studies, “we will lose ground on hard-won progress.”

Senators as well as witnesses recounted stories of research that was cut off that involved investigations of health disparities.

Poorer counties across the country have “a persistent problem with poorer outcomes for all kinds of health issues,” Bertagnolli said, with maternal and fetal health among the most visible. “And without targeting those particular populations to understand the reasons behind the disparities, how can we ever even begin to overcome them?”

Research that considered members of the LGBTQ+ community and how illness affects racial and ethnic groups differently have been recurring targets in the Trump administration NIH, several said.

Dr. Whitney Wharton, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Emory University, said the Trump administration’s NIH has canceled research projects that she and other colleagues were conducting on Alzheimer’s in racial and ethnic minority groups, including LGBTQ+ people.

Previous research by her lab found Black Americans were 64% more likely than non-Hispanic whites to get Alzheimer’s disease and are living with the disease longer, she said.

“The systematic elimination of these high-risk” groups of patients from research “will only serve to increase the total number of [Alzheimer’s] patients every year,” Wharton said. Understanding those disparities is especially important, she added, because with shifting demographics racial and ethnic minority groups will represent the majority of the population.

“These terminations will have very grave consequences for patients, for families, for communities, and for taxpayers,” Wharton said.

Wharton read from a letter she received Feb. 28 that canceled another project she was in the midst of.

“It cites transgender issues,” Wharton said. “And it says, ‘Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore rather than seriously examine biological realities. It is a policy of NIH not to prioritize these research programs.’”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) said the cancelation of grants, such as one on mental health therapies for LGBTQ people and other on LGBTQ cancer survivors, appear to violate a federal court order blocking the NIH from withholding grants that were already in progress.

He urged panelists to let the senators know if funds aren’t released when they’re supposed to be. “We need to know when they’re jammed because you can’t believe anything that the Trump administration tells you about the progress of the funds unless the funds are actually flowing,” Whitehouse said.

Wharton and Johnson both said the turmoil for NIH-funded research was at risk of driving away a generation of researchers.

“These cuts are very, very devastating and they’re very scary for young investigators, for students, whether they’ve been affected or not,” Wharton said. “These young scientists may leave research altogether because they’re nervous.”