Colorado's large medical research community deals with attempts to cut federal funding
Colorado's medical research community is looking at how to handle the potential of cuts to research grant money that it receives from the National Institutes of Health.
The Trump Administration has moved to cut millions of dollars in spending, but a judge acting on a lawsuit has put a temporary stop to the action.
"We've been watching these executive orders as they come out. Seeing how that may apply to our researchers and then responding as appropriately," said Dr. Thomas Flaig, vice chancellor for research at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Records show in 2024, NIH awards for CU Denver, including Anschutz, were providing nearly $350 million. The National Institutes of Health is the largest sponsor of the work at Anschutz. Research at Anschutz is financed in a mix of federal, state, pharmaceutical and private dollars.
Flaig says about 1,500 people lead individual grants conducting medical research from the NIH with thousands employed in supporting and helping with that research.
There are orders involving research that CU Anschutz is doing that may be inclusive of DEI initiatives that have been the subject of stop work orders. The university says it is looking at legal ramifications of those orders.
Work under NIH grants is highly competitive with researchers competing to win grants and succeeding about a fifth of the time. Explaining research and its many aspects has always been a challenge. Some has a greater likelihood of failure, but thinking more out of the box can lead to greater breakthroughs.
"If every trial you're doing is positive, you're not doing risky enough or daring enough trials to make change," said Flaig, who has grants to research bladder cancer.
For the most part, the cuts ordered by the Trump Administration would mean a significant reduction in what is called "indirect costs," which are provided for infrastructure and other aspects of running facilities to conduct research.
"There's biomedical waste, there's chemical waste we are very careful about those sorts of things. There's data storage needs. There's security around data storage. So it's really a rather elaborate infrastructure that's required to do this research. And it's expensive to fund that," said Flaig. "We think it will be a $74 million impact for the calendar year as best we can estimate it right now."
The cuts would mean a cap on the percentage of money set aside for indirect costs at 15%. Some institutions have much higher percentages which is based on a formula calculated by the government, which takes into consideration things like the level of research and need for facilities and where they are located in the country.
On his social media platform X, Elon Musk, leader of the White House's Department of Government Efficiency, called higher rates received by some universities a "ripoff."
"You need a facility to do this in. Facilities for research are expensive and have very sophisticated environments around those. If that infrastructure is not fully funded, you'll need to take funds from other areas to cover that," said Flaig.
He noted however, that it may be time to discuss indirect costs, but not abruptly.
"A broad discussion about how we do this, how do we mix private industry and federal together in a way that makes sense. I think that's a very fair conversation to have over time," he said.
The Colorado attorney general has joined 21 other attorneys general in suing and early this week, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order to temporarily halt the move by the Administration to make the cuts. Legally, there are questions about doing what Congress seems to have specifically prohibited. The Trump Administration also tried to cut NIH money for research in Trump's first term in 2018. Congress rejected the idea of cuts to indirect costs and even added language into subsequent bills prohibiting cuts in money devoted for indirect costs.
