Albuquerque Journal - March 23,2025
The National Institutes of Health is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research and one of the key reasons why the United States continues to lead the world in pioneering scientific discoveries. The announcement that the NIH would slash its funding of facilities and administration costs to 15% across the board for all research grants awarded to institutions has sent shock waves in the biomedical research community of the United States.
In FY2024, the NIH had an annual budget of $47 billion, which is less than 1% of the total FY2024 US budget. Approximately 11% of the NIH budget supports research projects at its own research campuses in Maryland. Another 5% of this budget is required to maintain and administer these world-class research facilities.
Much of the remaining NIH budget is allocated to extramural biomedical research at institutions found within all 50 states, disbursed as grants to teams of scientists that work on specific research projects (direct costs). In addition, the NIH provides facilities and administration funds (known as indirect costs) to extramural institutions. The rate of these indirect costs is similar to NIH’s own rate.
The expression, indirect costs, does not adequately describe the critical impact of these funds on biomedical research. These indirect costs help provide electricity, water, heating, air conditioning and high-speed internet for research laboratories, run computing clusters, create research space for patients enrolled in trials of groundbreaking medical therapies, clean and maintain research buildings, and pay for insurance, amongst many other vital operational needs. In doing so, indirect costs directly create and sustain jobs for a variety of qualified workers all across the United States: pipefitters, custodians, building engineers, HVAC technicians, plumbers, construction workers, data scientists and staff scientists.
Currently, individual universities negotiate indirect costs with federal agencies because the cost of maintaining scientific infrastructure is not uniform across the country. As all small business owners and homeowners know, utility bills, insurance premiums, real estate costs and wages for qualified workers are different in each location.
One use for indirect costs is purchasing large state-of-the-art instruments that are shared by many research laboratories. For example, high-magnification microscopes now have a resolution that allows scientists to visualize not only individual cells but even specific molecular complexes. This capability then allows scientists, for example, to determine the precise function of proteins that initiate cancer and to develop drugs that target these pro-cancer proteins.
Purchasing such advanced microscopes is far too expensive for individual research laboratories, so universities use indirect costs to purchase shared instruments and avoid waste.
The announcement that the NIH would slash its funding of indirect costs to 15% across the board for all institutions came as a shock to the biomedical research community. Implementing such drastic cuts would undermine the research infrastructures at the level needed to support the biomedical research enterprise and the discovery of life-saving treatments across the entirety of the United States. Such a massive reduction in indirect costs would result in the disrepair and even closure of research buildings, the loss of countless jobs, the inability to replace aging or malfunctioning research equipment and delays in the recruitment and monitoring of patients in clinical trials.
In addition to this short-term and immediate harm affecting all major state universities engaged in biomedical research, there will be profound and long-lasting damage because the discovery of new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes will be delayed, and we will not be able to invest in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence-aided drug discovery.
Research awards from other nonprofit foundations that support biomedical research will also lose their impact. These nonprofit foundations can offer minimal indirect costs because they rely on the scientific infrastructure and upkeep of facilities and equipment already funded by the indirect costs contained in NIH grants, thereby leveraging their impact.
Finally, indirect costs contribute to training students by providing infrastructure such as research equipment. Importantly, the U.S. needs more workers educated in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to drive and support the economy. The proposed cuts to NIH indirect funds will likely lead to a reduction in STEM student training and a subsequent decrease in the size of the U.S. scientific and medical workforce. With a shrinking workforce, how can the U.S. remain competitive with global rivals in biomedical research? Considering the impact of biomedical research at universities in every state, falling behind in this area should be considered a national security issue.
The current system of sufficient indirect costs allows institutions to be nimble and invest in emerging technologies and facilities that promote scientific discovery and creativity. While no grant funding system is flawless and improvements can always be made, any changes to the NIH funding system should be implemented in a way that prioritizes U.S. strategic interests by maintaining excellence in biomedical research and sustaining our world-class scientific and medical workforce.
This op-ed is co-authored by members of the Board and the Council of Past Presidents of the Association of Medical and Graduate Departments of Biochemistry which represents departments of biochemistry and molecular biology across all medical schools and graduate schools in the United States. The authors include: Robert Deschenes, Ph.D.; Tampa, Florida; Penelope Duerksen-Hughes, Ph.D.; Redlands, California; John E. Gustafson, Ph.D.; Stillwater, Oklahoma; Hua Lu, Ph.D.; New Orleans, Louisiana; Kristen Lynch, Ph.D.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Karlett Parra, Ph.D., MBA; Albuquerque; Jalees Rehman, MD; Chicago, Illinois; Liskin Swint-Kruse, Ph.D.; Kansas City, Kansas; Eric Sundberg, Ph.D.; Decatur, Georgia.
