‘Colossally wasteful’: Trump’s cuts imperil medical research at Columbia University

NEW YORK - Cancer researchers examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early signs of breast cancer. Paediatricians tracking the long-term health of children born to mothers infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy. Scientists searching for links between diabetes and dementia.

All these projects at Columbia University were paid for with federal research grants that have been abruptly terminated following the Trump administration’s decision to cut US$400 million (S$532 million) in funding to Columbia over concerns regarding the treatment of Jewish students.

Dozens of medical and scientific studies are ending or at risk of ending, leaving researchers scrambling to find alternative funding. In some cases, researchers have already started informing study subjects that research is suspended.

“Honestly, I wanted to cry,” said Ms Kathleen Graham, a 56-year-old nurse in the Bronx, upon learning that the diabetes study she had participated in for a quarter-century was ending.

At Columbia’s medical school, doctors said they were in shock as they received notice that their funding had been terminated. Some expressed resignation, while others sought a stopgap solution and asked whether the university could fund some of the staff on the projects in the short term, according to interviews with five doctors or professors who had been affected.

Dr Dawn Hershman, the interim chief of the division of haematology and oncology at Columbia’s medical school, said: “The most immediate need is to bridge in the short term and figure out what the longer-term plans are. That’s what is being worked out.”

About US$250 million of the US$400 million in cuts imposed in March involved funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Each year, NIH distributes billions of dollars in research funding to universities for biomedical and behavioural research. Those grants are a major engine of medical progress – and, for many scientists and medical researchers, of successful careers.

In interviews, several Columbia researchers who received grant cancellation notices during the past week and a half said they assumed that their cancelled grants were part of the US$400 million in cuts that the Trump administration had announced. But they said they had no way of knowing just yet – a reflection of the chaos and uncertainty engulfing laboratories and clinics across the nation.

In 2024, Columbia became the epicentre of a national student protest movement against the war in the Gaza Strip. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators established an encampment on campus and occupied a university building.

Some Jewish students said they experienced harassment walking around or near campus, or were ostracised. The university president requested that the New York Police Department clear out the demonstrators and later resigned amid fury over her handling of the divided campus.

The Trump administration has blamed the university, saying it did too little. Invoking federal anti-discrimination law, it has cut research funding to Columbia.

In addition to cutting research grants, the Trump administration has removed funding for clinical fellowships for early-career doctors who were developing a speciality in oncology and several other fields. Other grants eliminated money for hiring research nurses and other support staff needed for clinical trials, Dr Hershman said.

The sudden, deep cuts appear to be exceedingly rare, if not unprecedented. Some legal scholars say the administration’s tactics might violate the First Amendment and that the government appears to have ignored the procedures and restrictions laid out in the same anti-discrimination law it has cited.

Since announcing the cuts, the Trump administration has demanded that Columbia make dramatic changes to student discipline and put an academic department in receivership as a precondition to negotiations “regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government”, according to a letter sent on March 13 by federal officials.

The cuts will be felt most immediately by research scientists and doctors, many of whom work mainly at Columbia’s medical school and affiliated hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, some 50 blocks north of Columbia’s main campus.

In interviews, they expressed shock and sadness that their research projects had been cut so abruptly. Dr Olajide A. Williams, a neurologist and professor at Columbia’s medical school, had two grants that were terminated in March.

His research often focuses on health disparities and how to narrow them.

One grant was to study factors that led to better stroke recovery among poor and socially disadvantaged patients. Another grant explored how to increase screenings for colorectal cancer – which is rising among younger adults – across New York City.

“As I sit here trying to do this work, I truly believe to right a wrong with another wrong frays the fabric of justice,” Dr Williams said. “Fighting the horrors of anti-Semitism by punishing the nobility of health disparities research creates a cycle of injustice that causes pain on all sides.”

He said he was stunned.

“Right now, I’m sitting in that pain, trying to navigate the reality of what just happened to my grant portfolio,” he said.

More than 400 grants to Columbia University were terminated, according to NIH. Some of the grant cancellations will be felt far beyond Columbia. Large-scale studies can involve researchers at several universities, but, for administrative ease, the grant is linked to a single university. As a result, the cuts jeopardised some research projects involving numerous universities.

Last week, Dr David M. Nathan, a Harvard Medical School professor, learnt that funding for a diabetes research project – following a group of 1,700 people over more than 25 years – had been cut.

“The funding flows through Columbia, which is why we were vulnerable,” Dr Nathan said. “When the NIH, or whoever made this decision, decided to target Columbia’s funding, we were just kind of swept up in this.”

That research project had grown out of a landmark study that demonstrated the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions and the medication metformin in reducing Type 2 diabetes. Those findings were released in 2001. Dr Nathan and others followed the same participants over the next quarter-century. The latest phase, which was funded through Columbia, searched for links between diabetes and dementia.

Ms Graham said that as part of that study, she had recently undergone tests and had her gait analysed for early signs of any neurological problems. Over the years, she said, she has taken pride in helping produce data underscoring the advice that she and other medical professionals give to patients with diabetes.

Dr Nathan said the latest phase was two years into a five-year study.

“This is also colossally wasteful,” he said. “We haven’t collected all the data we hoped to collect.”

According to Dr Lucky Tran, a spokesman for Columbia University Irving Medical Centre, other cancelled studies include one focused on reducing maternal mortality in New York and another on treatments for chronic illnesses, including long Covid.

Last week, researchers were trying to catalogue which research had lost funding and which projects survived. Dr Hershman said: “We’re still in the process of trying to figure out all of the grants.” NYTIMES