In August, an 80-year-old woman walked into the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She was conscious, but had a stroke. Within minutes, doctors asked permission to remove the blood clot that was causing the stroke before further brain damage occurred.
She hesitated. The procedure was part of a clinical trial, and she had heard about the federal freeze. UCLA research grants. She wanted to know: Would this research be at risk and potentially affect her treatment?
These concerns put unnecessary pressure on the patient, who faces the loss of about 2 million nerve cells every minute while treatment is delayed, he said. Jeffrey Saverneurologist and longtime stroke researcher.
“Then worrying about what's happening with funding from the federal government is an unnecessary increase in the stress that patients experience,” Saver said.
Patients and researchers like Seiver are caught in the middle as the Trump administration accuses major universities of antisemitism and biasattracting research funds in an attempt seek concessions.
Scientists who have dedicated their lives to developing treatments for lung cancer, brain tumors and Alzheimer's disease say research funding should not be politicized and warn that the biggest losers will be patients waiting for life-saving treatments. They are also concerned that funding cuts caused by legal challenges could discourage potential scientists from entering the field, reducing the chances of medical breakthroughs.
“I thought stroke and Alzheimer's and all of these conditions affected Democrats and Republicans alike and would be supported by everyone,” Saver said. “The reasons for the suspension do not appear to be related to the work we do.”
In July, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy froze $584 million in medical and scientific research grants to UCLA after the Department of Justice said the university violated civil rights Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests. Trump administration proposed a settlement it would require UCLA to pay a $1.2 billion fine and review campus policies on admissions, hiring and gender-affirming health care to restore grants.
However, the federal government plays a critical role in funding vital research that industry has little incentive to support. Seiver said treatment discoveries made over the past 15 years have “transformed” stroke treatment. To keep the eight clinical studies afloat, Saver said, he and other faculty members in the neurology department sought outside funding and agreed to pay cuts. But they were close to running out before federal funds were restored.
In the emergency room, doctors told a stroke patient not to worry. Given the need to study her specific symptoms, they raised a ton of private donations to cover the procedure. She signed up and received treatment.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is posing a more direct challenge to President Donald Trump as he builds a national image, compared the president's demands extort.
And Newsom last week threatened to “instantly” take away public funding from any California university that signs the contract Trump said he would prioritize federal research funds to institutions that adhere to the administration's gender definitions, restrict international students and change admissions policies, among other provisions. “California will not fund schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, or academic freedom,” Newsom said in a statement.
In September, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of the Northern District of California ordered the reinstatement of frozen NIH grants in the state, embroiling UCLA researchers in a lawsuit originally filed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco in June after federal agencies cut hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to UC campuses.
Some private academic institutions have demanded their funding back, agreeing to pay hefty fines and changing campus policies, including Columbia Universitywhich agreed to pay $200 million, and Brown Universitywhich cost $50 million. Meanwhile, last month federal judge rules that the administration's cancellation of approximately $2.6 billion in grants to Harvard was illegal.
However, researchers fear the relief is temporary. Even after the district court has been reinstated, the case brought by UC researchers is still pending and could ultimately be decided in Trump's favor. The White House has promised to appeal resolution to restore funding to Harvard while increased attention school finances.
“We haven't seen everything yet. Many scientists, researchers and people who run labs are cautious, knowing that the near future may be a little bumpy,” said Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School. “They should feel it's a victory, but it may not last.”
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials did not respond to questions about potential harm to research while the funds were frozen or to criticism that they were wrongly politicizing money for potentially life-saving research.
In a statement about the administration's anti-Semitism campaign, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said that “we will not fund agencies that promote anti-Semitism. We will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that agencies comply with the law.”
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said in a subsequent statement that the department is “steadfast in its commitment to advancing groundbreaking biomedical research” and that it continues to “invest strategically in research that addresses the pressing challenges of our time.”
Much of the UCLA funding freeze affected basic science, which does not directly affect patients but has the potential to significantly improve treatment. David Shackelford, a researcher studying new ways to stop the growth of treatment-resistant lung cancer, said he is close to a potential breakthrough in treating the disease, which kills 9 out of 10 patients within five years of diagnosis.
“I’m not used to my science being politicized,” Shackelford said. “It's cancer. We should never even discuss this subject.”
As legal battles rage, Democratic state legislators is considering a $23 billion bond offering in next year's newsletter on the allocation of government funds to continue research into cancer, stroke and infectious diseases, as well as other scientific research. But government bond money, if approved by voters, would not come close to replacing the federal grants that traditionally fund the lion's share of biomedical research.
Only in 2024, for example, approximately $5.1 billion in NIH funding flowed into California, with $3.8 billion of that going to universities. And the proposed bond would be broad, one-time funding that could cover other areas of research, such as climate change research, marine ecosystems or wildfire prevention.
This was stated by the President of the University of California, James Milliken. the possibility of even greater federal cuts to the state's second-largest employer will have a ripple effect throughout California's economy.
While other universities sued the Trump administration, UC leaders instead entered into a “good faith dialogue” with the Justice Department in hopes of reaching a settlement, Milliken said.
S. Thomas Carmichael, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said about 55 grants totaling $23 million from the NIH, including research into migraines, epilepsy and autism, were frozen in his department at the David Geffen School of Medicine. As severe as the funding cuts were, he warned of the Trump administration's ability to attack school accreditation, restrict visas for foreign students or launch investigations.
“This is essentially a complete and total power imbalance that the federal government needs to address,” Carmichael said. “If you don’t just back down, don’t concede anything, you won’t win.”
Additionally, in mid-September, a group of University of California faculty unions and associations filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that the threat to research funds constitutes “financial coercion” into enacting campus policies that restrict free speech. A hearing in the case is scheduled for December.
Brenda L., a UCLA patient, said she was devastated when a scan in 2021 led to her being diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at age 70. After 18 months of taking Tagrisso, a drug considered the gold standard treatment for this particular cancer, her tumors began to grow again. (Brenda declined to give her full name because she had not disclosed her diagnosis to some family members.)
“I just felt like I was done,” said Brenda, now 75 and living in Bakersfield. She joined the clinical trial and took another experimental drug with Tagrisso for two years. This combination virtually stopped the progression of the cancer.
“I was lucky,” said Brenda, whose current trial was not affected. “Other patients should have the same chance.”
This article was prepared KFF health newswhich publishes California Health Lineeditorially independent service California Health Foundation.
