Durbin Meets With National Cancer Institute Director Amidst Widespread Concern About The Damage Being Done To Our Nation’s Medical Research Infrastructure

Durbin Meets With National Cancer Institute Director Amidst Widespread Concern About The Damage Being Done To Our Nation's Medical Research Infrastructure

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Co-Chair of the Senate National Institutes of Health (NIH) Caucus, today met with National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director Dr. Anthony Letai to discuss the future of cancer research as President Trump and Health and Human Services' Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. push forward with efforts to slash funding, delay grant awards, and otherwise dismantle our nation's critical medical research infrastructure.

The Trump Administration has frozen, delayed, or cancelled billions in NIH grant funding; fired thousands of NIH staffers; and, last year, proposed a budget that would have imposed a 40 percent cut to medical research at NIH, including a more-than 35 percent cut to cancer research specifically. These actions threaten our nation's progress to find new cures and treatments for cancer patients and their families and discourage the next generation of researchers from entering the medical research field. As of early March, NCI is 42 percent behind its median 2020-2025 pace for awarding new or existing grants-roughly 1,350 fewer awards by this time than in previous years.

"What the Trump Administration and specifically Secretary Kennedy are doing to medical research conducted at NIH and NCI is horrific. Patients desperate for cures are in agony because of this Administration's efforts to stop medical research in its tracks," said Durbin. "Today I spoke with Director Letai about the importance of investing in research that results in new cures and treatments for cancer patients and their families. It is my hope that, under his leadership, the NCI will be laser-focused on its core mission to reduce the burden of cancer by supporting-in a timely manner-new and existing scientific research that will save lives."

Photos of the meeting are available here.

Durbin has long been a strong advocate for robust medical research. His legislation, the American Cures Act, would provide annual budget increases of five percent plus inflation at America's top four biomedical research agencies: NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense Health Program, and the Veterans Medical and Prosthetics Research Program. Thanks to Durbin's efforts to increase medical research funding, Congress has provided NIH with a 60 percent funding increase over the past decade.

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