Lost faith, new hope: How researchers have responded to NIH grant disruptions

Anurupa Dev, PhD, Alyssa Browne, PhD, Rebecca Dutch, PhD, and Harold Collard, MD, speak during Learn Serve Lead 2026 on Monday, Nov. 9.

Credit: Kaveh Sardari

Drastic disruptions in research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over the past two years have destabilized the nation's basic science research, as scientists struggle to keep projects alive, face plummeting staff morale, and question the reliability of the NIH to fund innovative projects.

But there's reason for optimism in the future, as the changes in NIH policies and priorities become the new normal, and labs explore new ways to fund and carry out their work.

Those were among the key assessments delivered by researchers in a panel discussion at Learn Serve Lead 2026: The AAMC Annual Meeting, on Monday, Nov. 9.

"I've never in my research career seen morale as low as it's been in the past two years," said Rebecca Dutch, PhD, vice dean for research at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine (UKCOM).

"Most fundamentally what's changed is a loss of confidence" in the reliability of NIH funding, said Harold Collard, MD, vice chancellor for research at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). "The trust in the relationship [between the NIH and research institutions] has been challenged."

Impacts measured - and felt

The session - entitled "NIH Funding in a New Environment: How Two Years Has Changed the World's Largest Research Funder" and moderated by Anurupa Dev, PhD, science policy and strategy director at the AAMC - examined the breadth and impact of changes in NIH funding policies and priorities that began in early 2025.

The major disruptions took the form of grants being terminated or frozen while the agency considered whether to terminate them, said Alyssa Browne, PhD, senior analyst for research and data science at the AAMC.

Browne presented a selection of data about those disruptions from a new AAMC study, Tracking Two Years of Change in NIH Funding. Among the findings:

• Since January 2025, 5,776 NIH grants have been frozen or terminated; 1,175 have not been restored.
• The cumulative number of grants dropped from about 64,000 in fiscal year 2024 to under 56,000 by the end of fiscal year 2026.
• The decrease includes about 5,000 fewer research project grants - the largest single type of NIH grant - and about 1,200 fewer grants to train scientists.
• A major reason for the decrease is that the NIH awarded more multi-year grants. The NIH has indicated that it will continue to prioritize multi-year grants, which reduces the number of total grants, Browne explained, as "there's less funding available" for other types of awards.

The researchers talked about the real-world impacts on medical science research.

UCSF has reduced staff, Collard said. For the long term, the disruption "has an impact on how we can plan as an organization. Stability in federal funding is really important. We have to have some idea of what our funding stream will be so we can make investments [in staff and resources] and feel like we have ways of paying for them."

Browne noted that even where grants were restored, the damage was often significant to both the project and the scientists.

"Once a project has been paused it can sometimes be impossible to pick it up again," Browne said. Among the reasons is that the researchers obligated themselves to other work or left their institutions because those institutions "lost the ability to support the researchers."

UKCOM responded by creating a pool of "bridge funds" to help research labs cover costs - such as time that staff had already put in on a project - when their grant funds were frozen or terminated, Dutch said.

"Labs are like small businesses," she said. When a grant is terminated or frozen, "you are scrambling to figure out how to pay anyone" who has worked under that award.

For Collard, one of the most significant losses has been "the weakening of the social contract" that the government would "fund biomedical research in return for improvements in people's lives."

Moving forward

University leaders have worked with scientists to think about new ways to fund and carry out their work, Collard and Dutch said. These include mentoring researchers on how to pivot to the kind of research that the NIH might be most likely to fund, and seeking more collaborations and private funding.

"We've tried to find the opportunity in the crisis," Collard said. "There are opportunities to innovate. We [will] come out with some new strengths."

As institutions try those innovations, and the new NIH policies and priorities settle in, Collard said, "I feel optimistic about the path forward."