Steep cuts to federal medical research grants this year have now disrupted millions in awards once backed by former President Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, after the Trump administration froze funding to Columbia University and Harvard University over their handling of campus protests about the war in Gaza.
Biden revealed Sunday he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer. His “Moonshot” initiative was already personal because his son Beau died of brain cancer.
Multiple cancer scientists at Harvard University say they have seen their National Institutes of Health funding evaporate in recent weeks due to the funding freeze.
“We are not allowed to charge anything on these grants and I understand that Harvard hasn’t been reimbursed for any charges to these grants for at least 30 days,” Joan Brugge, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, told CBS News in an email.
Brugge said the university had informed her that her research into mutations linked to breast cancer, as well as studying the recurrence of ovarian cancer, was among some 350 federal grants terminated at Harvard Medical School.
Harvard bioengineering professor David Mooney said all cancer research funding from NIH’s National Cancer Institute for his team had also been cut off, including multiple grants to post-doctoral research fellows.
The Trump administration also terminated millions awarded for developing anti-cancer immunity at the university’s immuno-engineering center, which was launched in 2020 as part of the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative. Mooney’s lab was the first to engineer an “implantable biomaterial cancer vaccine” to retrain the immune system to destroy cancer cells, the university says.
“This will dramatically diminish our ability to make progress in developing cancer immunotherapies,” Mooney said in an email.
Under versions of the cancer initiative launched by Biden first as vice president in 2016 — and later rebooted in 2022 after he was elected president — the federal government poured more than $1 billion into a broad array of research, prevention and treatment projects.
That money came largely from the 21st Century Cures Act passed by Congress in 2016, which went to more than 100 different institutions. It included millions awarded to support the work of cancer centers around the country.
That also included a long-running award to support the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Now federal records show the award to support Columbia’s cancer center has also been terminated.
“Anti-Semitism — like racism — is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history’s most deadly plagues,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a March statement, announcing plans to look for cuts to Columbia’s funding.
The Trump administration has targeted universities for their handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus, alleging they let antisemitism go unchecked, which the universities dispute.
NIH records show the money at Columbia’s cancer center had gone to a broad array of projects, ranging from clinical studies to administrative costs.
Beyond the Trump administration’s cuts to Columbia and Harvard, one other award directly linked to the Biden cancer initiative is also listed as terminated: a project funded at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute to “address cancer disparities among Indigenous sexual and gender minority populations” with films, outreach and illustrations.
Other projects funded by NIH’s National Cancer Institute have also had their funding canceled after officials deemed they ran afoul of other White House executive orders that took aim at topics like “gender ideology extremism” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.
Support and communications staff at the cancer institute were also not spared in Kennedy and DOGE’s layoffs earlier this year.
Senate Democrats have criticized Kennedy and President Trump for cuts to NIH’s grants this year, which they said in a report amounts to at least $15.1 million in cancer funding lost.
“Trump’s war on science is an attack against anyone who has ever loved someone with cancer,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said earlier this month.
