A confidential Trump administration budget document obtained by The Cancer Letter called for a 40% budget cut to NIH and a restructuring of the 27 existing NIH institutes and centers down to just eight. But what else is in it?
Speaking on The Cancer Letter Podcast, Taofeek Kunle Owonikoko recalled recent conversations with two junior faculty members at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Confidential Trump administration budget documents show that the upcoming FY26 Budget Request will radically cut about $50 billion out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reshuffling agency components, and slashing the number of NIH institutes and centers to just eight.
In an email sent to directors and deputy directors of NCI-designated cancer centers, Krzysztof Ptak, director of the NCI Office of Cancer Centers, provided a comparison between the newly issued Cancer Center Support Grant Notice of Funding Opportunity with the previous version of the document.
Most cancer genome studies have focused on mutations in the tumor itself and how such gene variants allow a tumor to grow unchecked. A study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis takes a deep dive into inherited cancer mutations measured in a healthy blood sample and reports how those mutations might take a toll on the body’s cells starting at birth, perhaps predisposing a person to develop cancers at various stages of life.
In the absence of the federal funding, cancer research will be leaning on private funders. But few private funders have the freedom to ask fundamental questions—questions whose answers may not have an immediate clinical impact but can dramatically advance scientific knowledge.