Gwyneth K. Shaw Photos
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Stephen Strittmatter.
Stephen Strittmatter’s lab is stocked with the latest medical equipment and a hive of graduate students working to help people with Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders.
The federal budget ax looming over hundreds of programs nationwide is also casting a shadow here. A proposed $1.6 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget could curtail — or stop altogether — cutting-edge work at Yale medical school labs like Strittmatter’s and in similar labs across the country.
“A 2 percent cut in NIH funding may decrease innovation by 50 percent,” Strittmatter, a professor of neurology and neurobiology, said Monday during a visit with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro aimed at spotlighting Yale medical research, as well as the potential consequences of the cuts.
“There’s not a 1‑to‑1 correlation,” he said.
Yale professors Daniel Colon-Ramos,Tony Koleske and Marc Hammarlund.
Strittmatter’s younger colleagues — and graduate students who are training in their labs — are also worried about money. Daniel Colon-Ramos, an assistant professor at the medical school, is working on neural connectivity. His grant funding, which came from special NIH money tucked into the stimulus package, runs out in June.
“That research will just stop” if the next grant doesn’t come through, Colon-Ramos said.
Grants fund most of the salaries of academic researchers, as well as their labs. That includes students training with them, some of whom are funded by the NIH. Nearly a dozen student slots at Yale could be in jeopardy.
The NIH money is awarded competitively, with peer review of applications, not by university, so it’s impossible to know exactly what the impact would be for any individual researcher or institution.
“This work is at real risk,” added Tony Koleske, an associate professor in Yale’s molecular biophysics and biochemistry department. He’s trying to home in on a “switch” that could stop breast cancer cells from migrating, and said he’d been working on a revision of his latest grant proposal just before the DeLauro meet-and-greet.
“There just isn’t enough money to go around,” he said.
DeLauro, a Democrat whose district includes the New Haven area, pledged to “fight like hell” for NIH funding. After several years of increasing funding for the agency — a bipartisan goal — the budget passed last month in the Republican-led House offers research cuts that are “misguided,” she said.
The current fight is over funding for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. If the NIH loses all $1.6 billion, DeLauro said, the agency will approve about 3,000 fewer grants than it did in the previous year. Roughly 100 clinical trails would be curtailed, or simply halted, she said.
“What a loss for the country. What a loss for the world,” said DeLauro, who noted that she survived ovarian cancer a quarter-century ago, thanks to the biomedical research of that era. “It will negatively affect the health of every American.”
Republicans are pushing for tough across-the-board cuts — the House bill slashes more than $60 billion — to reduce the budget deficit and slim down government. They say a smaller government and lower taxes will foment economic growth. Democrats like DeLauro say the GOP plan would hurt social services and other essential government programs at a time when they’re most needed, and add to the unemployment rolls to boot.
“The public has got to understand what cuts to the NIH mean,” DeLauro said.
After a week-long campaign in which lawmakers from both parties made their pitch about the budget to constituents, Congress returned to session Monday. The House and Senate are expected to agree on a temporary budget that will briefly avert a government shutdown. DeLauro said she needs to look at what the reprieve legislation does to the NIH and other health-related programs.
There’s a history of innovation, led by the U.S., that’s also at stake in this debate, Colon-Ramos said. Those advances in biomedical research have come because of government support, he said.
“The consequences of stopping that commitment will be catastrophic,” Colon-Ramos said.
Jacqueline Heiss (pictured, with DeLauro) works in Strittmatter’s lab looking at the tiny spines found on neurons in the brain for clues to helping Alzheimer’s patients. When DeLauro stopped by her corner of the room, she showed the congresswoman images of how those spines retract when treated with amyloid beta, a key element of the plaques found in the brains of those who have Alzheimer’s.
Heiss told DeLauro she’s looking for the reason why this happens, and what it means for finding a cure.
“Find it! Find it!” DeLauro exclaimed. “We’re counting on you.”
This country cannot afford to carry out important medical research, provide the necessities of life and at the same time support wars of occupation and funnel our wealth to the extreme rich.
End the wars, tax the rich, rebuild America.