Job cuts at the National Institutes of Health have left many cancer patients in limbo as they wait on their specialized treatment to be completed, The Washington Post reported June 18.
Here’s what to know:
1. As of April, the production of specialized immune-cell therapies for metastatic cancer patients was delayed due to NIH staff cuts that fired several skilled lab technicians who create the drugs. Before the cut, the team could create treatments for two or three patients a week, but now it can only help one.
2. The cuts mean that patients have to wait eight to 10 weeks for their treatment, rather than two to three.
3. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, has begun allowing lab leaders to hire contractors or request help from other scientists across NIH, officials told the Post. However, the federal contracting process is slow and many scientists who were let go have been interviewing for other jobs. The process for training a new technician on how to prepare specialized treatments for cancer can take four to six months.
4. On June 9, more than 300 staff members across the NIH’s 27 institutes sent a letter titled, “The Bethesda Declaration,” in reference to the NIH’s headquarters in Bethesda, Md., to the agency’s director, Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, condemning disruptions to medical research and cuts to essential staff in recent months.
The letter urges Dr. Bhattacharya to restore the 2,100 research grants that have been terminated since January; address recent disruptions to foreign research collaborations by allowing peer-reviewed research “with vetted foreign collaborators to continue,” reinstate essential NIH staff members who have been terminated, forgo the 15% cap on indirect costs for medical research and restore the independent peer-review process.
5. Dr. Bhattacharya responded to the letter in a post on X, stating he wants the NIH to succeed and believes that “dissent in science is productive,” but that the staff letter “has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months.” He said the agency has not ended “legitimate international collaborations” and that terminated grants are being reviewed, with some already being reinstated.
