NIH reduces MRNA vaccine funding: Does there be further cuts?
NIH reduces MRNA vaccine funding: Does there be further cuts?
The US National Institute of Health (Nih) have Your cuts in science financing. href = "https://taggs.hhs.gov/content/hhs_grants_terminated.pdf" Data-track = "Click" Data-label = "https://taggs.gov/content/data/hs_grants_terminated.pdf" Data track category = "Body Text Link"> Hundreds of grants comprises the studies on various topics-from HIV in children to reducing mold pollution and its effects on asthma. The concern among scientists is growing that Research on mrNA vaccines Next.
Nature has learned that the authority is already has stopped at least one grant Supported who examined the body's immune response to an MRNA vaccine against Covid-19.
The concerns regarding the deletion of grants for mRNA vaccines have grown after receiving an email dated March 6, in which NIH employees were asked to create a list of grants to investigate this technology. The incumbent NIH director Matthew Memoli "requested information about the investments of the NIH in research on mrNA vaccines"-including the current and planned grants, as can be seen from the email that set a period of one day. At the time of the deadline, a table with over 130 entries was created, according to a NIH source that wanted to remain anonymous.
Although the grants for mRNA vaccine research have not yet been deleted to a large extent, as is the case with other topics- including LGBT+-Gesundheit -is an ominous sign, says Justin Richner, a viral immunologist at the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois in chicago.
NIH employees are so concerned that they have started not to mention applicants for grants in their research proposals, reports a health and politicians Washington D.C. Sources that spoke to Nature indicated that this was not an official instruction of the NIH management, but a recommendation of individual program managers.
"to remove an effective tool to combat infectious diseases-it is difficult to imagine that we would do so as a society," says Richner, who develops an MRNA vaccine against the dengue virus.
The nih, the largest sponsor of biomedical research worldwide , did not respond to inquiries from nature as to whether research into mrNA vaccines is being set or the concerns of the scientists about political interference in scientific research.
The panic about the grants for mRNA vaccines comes immediately after the end of more than 40 grants for the examination of opponents of vaccination. Similar to the request for a list of mRNA vaccination projects, the authority requested a table with all active projects for vaccination opponent research. NIH employees have been informed that certain grants should be canceled by the end of the day, in an email on March 10, which Nature received. "It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research activities that aim to gain scientific knowledge of why people hesitate to be vaccinated, and/or to explore opportunities to improve the interest and obligation to vaccination," said the string letters.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time opponent of vaccination, was selected by US President Donald Trump as the nation's health minister and is now heading the overriding authority of the NIH. In 2021, he unsuccessfully requested that the approval of MRNA-COVID-19 vaccines be withdrawn from government agencies, and wrongly claimed that this vaccination type was the "deadliest vaccine that has ever been produced", whereby he called on unconfirmed claims in a state-managed database.
The mrNA vaccines were famous during the Covid 19 pandemic, not only because of their security and effectiveness in preventing serious illnesses, but also because of the speed at which they were developed -mainly during the first Trump administration. The vaccines includes genetic instructions that tell a person's cells to create copies of viral proteins , also known as antigens. This process stimulates the body to produce protective antibodies and immune cells.
modeling studies suggest that MRNA vaccines worldwide saved more than 14 million lives in the first year of their administration 1 Covid-19 pandemic. Researchers are now testing the technology against a large number of diseases, including diseases and cancer transmitted by mosquitoes, for which there are more than 100 ongoing studies. Nevertheless, some US officials, including Floridas Minister of Health , a moratorium for technology and unexpectedly claimed so that the vaccines cause cancer and are not safe.
"I would never have thought that the government would turn against a research field for non-scientific reasons," says Drew Weissman, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia which shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 2023, because he laid the basics to create mRNA vaccines. "I feel most confused because the potential for RNA is so enormous."