For no good reason, Trump and Bobby Jr. are killing one of the most promising lines of medical research
Led by a team at Northwestern University, researchers
identified 178 active National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants related to RNA
vaccines from 1997 through 2025. Together, the grants represented $1.65 billion
in funding.
Many grants focused on viral vaccines (42%), including those
for COVID, HIV, and highly contagious tropical diseases, while substantial
investment also supported RNA technology and cancer research. Overall, the
grants produced 2,342 publications and nearly 150,000 citations, highlighting
what the authors describe as clear clinical impact.
RNA tech ‘could impact virtually every aspect of human
health’
“The grants we analyzed have resulted in strong scientific
output,” the researchers write. “The clinical impact of this work was apparent,
with 10% of publications classified as [sic] and 35% being cited in clinical
trials or practice guidelines.”
What’s more, 18 grants were awarded through the Small
Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program,
underscoring how RNA funding supports biotech entrepreneurship.
“Our study showed that RNA technology could impact virtually
every aspect of human health, from debilitating chronic diseases to conditions
even thought incurable,” lead author Anirudha S. Chandrabhatla, MD, said in a
UVA Health press release.
In an accompanying commentary, Alyson
Ann Kelvin, PhD, a veterinary medicine faculty member at the University of
Calgary, and Angela Rasmussen, PhD, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious
Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, place the findings in
the context of mounting political and public scrutiny of RNA technology.
They note that, as antivaccine sentiment continues to rise,
approximately $500 million in RNA vaccine funding has been targeted for cuts in
2025.
Huge benefit of mRNA COVID vaccines
The commentary highlights one notable accomplishment of
NIH-supported RNA research—the rapid development and deployment of COVID-19
vaccines, most notably, those produced using mRNA technology. COVID vaccination
is estimated to have saved millions of lives globally, with one study
estimating 18 million lives saved in the first year of its rollout. COVID
vaccination overall was also associated with a 60% reduction in the pandemic’s
financial burden.
Beyond COVID, the commentators emphasize the “flexible
plug-and-play” nature of RNA technology, which can be adapted to emerging
infectious diseases, drug resistance, shifting herd immunity, and even
personalized cancer therapy. They point to cancer as a major frontier, noting
the more than 2 million new US cancer diagnoses annually and the potential for
relatively low-cost RNA vaccines to offset part of the roughly $200 billion
annual financial burden of cancer care.
Excising RNA vaccine research from the NIH research
portfolio is antithetical to current goals of making America healthy.
Funding cuts have also affected work on RNA influenza
vaccines, which could enable faster strain matching and potentially prevent
thousands of flu-related hospitalizations and deaths. The setback comes during
a particularly severe flu season, with the current vaccine poorly matched to
the dominant circulating strain.
“Excising RNA vaccine research from the NIH research
portfolio is antithetical to current goals of making America healthy,” Kelvin
and Rasmussen conclude, warning that decisions made now could shape the
nation’s readiness for future pandemics and advances in cancer care. “Defunding
RNA vaccine research or vaccine research in general forfeits any possible
return on US taxpayer investments in vaccine technology that has saved millions
of lives and has the potential to save millions more.”