Science News & Analysis

NIH ordered to cancel $2.6 billion in contracts; clinical trials at universities disrupted (April 3, 2025)

April 3, 2025 — The Trump administration directed the NIH to eliminate $2.6 billion in contracts as part of a DOGE mandate that each division of the Department of Health and Human Services cut 35 percent of its contracts. NIH contracts are functionally different from grants: they directly fund staff scientists, research and development projects, and critically, clinical trials conducted at universities and medical centers — the engine of drug development and new treatment discovery. An agency official acknowledged that a significant portion of the contract budget for the fiscal year had already been spent, and warned that a 35 percent cut would be "devastating" to the agency's operations.

The clinical trial disruptions were among the most serious consequences. Trials for cancer treatments, Alzheimer's disease, rare pediatric conditions, and infectious diseases were abruptly interrupted — with researchers unable to enroll new patients, maintain ongoing participant follow-up, or complete data collection. Some trials that had been running for years and were close to generating actionable results were simply terminated, with the prior investment yielding nothing. The National Cancer Institute alone faced a more than 35 percent cut to cancer research specifically, on top of the grant terminations already underway.

The combined effect of the indirect cost cap, the ideologically targeted grant terminations, and the DOGE contract mandate was a simultaneous three-front assault on the NIH's operating capacity: overhead funding that keeps labs running, project grants that fund specific research, and contracts that support clinical work and infrastructure. A senior NIH official described the contract cuts as "coming on top of everything else" — compounding disruptions that had already pushed many labs to the brink of closure and forced principal investigators to lay off long-term team members.