The largest cancer research organization in the U.S. is calling on Congress to reject President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget for the National Institutes of Health.
The American Association for Cancer Research said the proposal would result in an almost 40% cut to the NIH’s research budget. The AACR wants Congress to support a $51.3 billion funding increase for the NIH instead, according to a May 6 news release from the organization.
The organization said budget cuts would “destabilize our nation’s medical research enterprise,” halt clinical trials, disrupt cancer researchers’ careers and jeopardize treatment access for patients. The cuts would also affect the economy, the AACR said, citing data that shows for every $1 invested in NIH research in 2024, there was a $2.56 return.
“We are laser-focused on working collaboratively with leaders in both parties and across all branches of government to ensure that medical research for public health continues to be a national priority,” AACR President Lillian Siu, MD, who also serves as BMO Chair in Precision Genomics at University Health Network’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, said in the release.
“For decades, NIH has been the nation’s cornerstone of medical research, driving discoveries that have led to groundbreaking treatments, increased survival rates and enhanced quality of life for patients,” former AACR President Patricia LoRusso, DO, PhD, associate cancer center director of experimental therapeutics at New Haven, Conn.-based Yale Cancer Center, said in the release. “Therefore, the medical research community is calling upon members of Congress to stop the draconian cuts at NIH and to sustain the very momentum that has brought us to this moment of unparalleled scientific opportunity.”
