Email today: “Funding for Project [xxx] is hereby terminated… The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities…"

[BradStevens]

Let me be unvague.

I am the director of all medicinal chemistry support for the Midwest AViDD Center, where AViDD stands for antiviral drug discovery. It began in 2022 as a collaboration of over 40 professors across many Universities and Research Institutes: U. Minnesota, U. Illinois-Chicago, UF Scripps Research, University of Florida, University of Louisville, UT San Antonio, Baylor College of Medicine, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Boston University, Boston Children's Hospital. I am a medicinal chemist with 15 years of pharma experience and 19 years of academic experience. IU PhD 1991.

The grant was funded in 2022 for 5 years, with the mandate to focus on entirely new areas of antivirals research, directed toward viruses identified as having "high pandemic potential" and with well-defined milestones to meet.

About a year ago we were told that years 4 and 5 were defunded. Our course of action was to save funds and focus on only the projects with the very best preliminary results, leaving money "left over" to continue the work into a 4th year, a request called a "no cost extension" or "NCE".

Last week we learned that the NCE might not be considered or awarded. So money already allocated, that we did not spend because we were frugal, was taken away with no justification.

Now we are told with no advance notice that funding ends today. Fire everybody.

The notice was not written by NIH officials, since it was riddled with scientific errors. It was written by DOGE or other Trump lackeys and the NIH officer was ordered to send it out.

Does this help?

Go to the press.

 

[BradStevens]

Let me be unvague.

I am the director of all medicinal chemistry support for the Midwest AViDD Center, where AViDD stands for antiviral drug discovery. It began in 2022 as a collaboration of over 40 professors across many Universities and Research Institutes: U. Minnesota, U. Illinois-Chicago, UF Scripps Research, University of Florida, University of Louisville, UT San Antonio, Baylor College of Medicine, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Boston University, Boston Children's Hospital. I am a medicinal chemist with 15 years of pharma experience and 19 years of academic experience. IU PhD 1991.

The grant was funded in 2022 for 5 years, with the mandate to focus on entirely new areas of antivirals research, directed toward viruses identified as having "high pandemic potential" and with well-defined milestones to meet.

About a year ago we were told that years 4 and 5 were defunded. Our course of action was to save funds and focus on only the projects with the very best preliminary results, leaving money "left over" to continue the work into a 4th year, a request called a "no cost extension" or "NCE".

Last week we learned that the NCE might not be considered or awarded. So money already allocated, that we did not spend because we were frugal, was taken away with no justification.

Now we are told with no advance notice that funding ends today. Fire everybody.

The notice was not written by NIH officials, since it was riddled with scientific errors. It was written by DOGE or other Trump lackeys and the NIH officer was ordered to send it out.

Does this help?

So the Biden admin already defunded and sought to end your research. And now DOGE has decided to just cut their losses now, instead of it running out the year. Did the Biden admin also cost lives everyone?

Pfizer is not insulated from any liability whatsoever in the sale of its antiviral Paxlovid.

The PREP ACT did establish free access by emergency use authorization and gave limited liability for COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, and tests. But once such treatments moved away from being distributed under the EUA agreement and they transitioned to traditional pathways for procurement, distribution, and payment, PREP Act coverage terminated.

There is some limited liability coverage remaining for vaccines, to incentivize companies to do research in a highly litigious area. It provides no protection for fraud or data falsification.

There is limited liability for women's health drugs as well, for example. There has to be, if you think about it.

One famous story was in the 1970s a company developed a drug called Bendectin that was super effective in curbing morning sickness in pregnant women. It was safe in clinical trials, but it didn't PREVENT certain adverse events, such as birth defects. So 12 different women among many thousands taking it had a child with a birth defect, the same rate of birth defects seen in women NOT taking it. But each of them sued anyway. Each of them lost in court because the safety data was clear. But it expensive to even WIN court cases, and the publicity is awful. So the drug was pulled, the company said they would no longer work in women's health, a dozen other companies made the same declaration, and then the FDA said wait a minute, women's health is important. Don't abandon it. We will limit liability through an act of Congress.

Terrible idea to limit liability if that's all they did. At least set up a fund for victims if they can prove causation, like with vaccines. What you describe is nothing more than a tax on the worst victims to benefit everyone else.

 

[BradStevens]

40 professors, I doubt they are all working full-time on it. Rather, they have pieces.

I don't know if this is worth investing in, I doubt you know. Shooter has an idea, but it is his project so I wouldn't expect it to be totally unbiased. But yes, generally speaking, preparing for all these various possible contagions is a good idea. Pharma isn't about to put millions (or more) into something they don't know will ever develop.

Let's move it from shooter to NASA; should we fund the efforts to nudge asteroids away from Earth? We don't know when the next one will threaten us, it might be a thousand years from now. We also might have one in 5 years. Should we fund it, or should we say it isn't worth the risk, and if one does come in 5 years we can just kiss our As goodbye?

Or there is research in new antibiotics. Since we don't take them every day, it is far more profitable to treat things like erectile dysfunction. There's a pill you take daily for life, boom, profit. A course of antibiotics one takes 10 times and then won't need it for 10 more years, not a lot of money. Should the government fund antibiotic research? If they don't, who does? If no one does, we will get back to a point where people will routinely die from a scraped knee. Is that what we want? The article below is 6 years old, so 8 years ago 2 million Americans had antimicrobial-resistant infections. The most recent I see is 2019 at 2.8 million.

The drugs don’t work: what happens after antibiotics?

Antibiotic resistance is growing so fast that routine surgery could soon become impossible. But scientists are fighting back in the battle against infection. By Oliver Franklin-Wallis

www.theguardian.com

I don't have an answer, but if we are cutting medical research that is serious research (cancer and future pandemics are serious), is there any triage being done in cutting, or is it just cut everything for the hell of it?

It's a really good discussion to have, but I think you have to make the best argument for the other side. They aren't doing it "for the hell of it."

I'd imagine their argument would run something like this: (1) centralized planning of medical research doesn't work as well as private research with a profit motive and (2) given our current debt, we can't afford this stuff at this time. (I'm developing the arguments, not agreeing with them). Typical fiscal conservative stances.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

I lead a research team studying /finding new antiviral drugs (NOT vaccines) for any and all viruses of pandemic potential. Not just COVID-19, but Ebola, Zika, Lassa fever, Dengue, Machupo viruses, and others.

But I guess we are shutting it all down. Someone (DOGE?) has determined that no more antiviral outbreaks will ever occur in the future!

Email this morning: “Funding for Project Number [xxx] is hereby terminated… The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities…"

"The end of the pandemic provides cause to terminate COVID-related grant funds. These grant funds were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary… no corrective action is possible here."

"The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities, and no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities. Costs resulting from financial obligations incurred after termination are not allowable”.


---
To be clear, this is not a COVID-19-specific grant. It targets many other viruses. With respect to COVID-19, our main focus is targeting ALL coronaviruses; SARS1, MERS, SARS2, etc so we have something for any future "COVID-XY" by blocking machinery common to all coronaviruses.

But we are apparently throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It seems I need to lay off people ASAP. Graduate students, postdocs, staff scientists....

Some questions

How much money has your group spent on this project?

What are the results or products of your group?

Does the termination of government funds for your group affect the research carried on by the pharmaceutical industry?

Is the NIH funding other anti-viral research?

 

[CO. Hoosier]

Let me be unvague.

I am the director of all medicinal chemistry support for the Midwest AViDD Center, where AViDD stands for antiviral drug discovery. It began in 2022 as a collaboration of over 40 professors across many Universities and Research Institutes: U. Minnesota, U. Illinois-Chicago, UF Scripps Research, University of Florida, University of Louisville, UT San Antonio, Baylor College of Medicine, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Boston University, Boston Children's Hospital. I am a medicinal chemist with 15 years of pharma experience and 19 years of academic experience. IU PhD 1991.

The grant was funded in 2022 for 5 years, with the mandate to focus on entirely new areas of antivirals research, directed toward viruses identified as having "high pandemic potential" and with well-defined milestones to meet.

About a year ago we were told that years 4 and 5 were defunded. Our course of action was to save funds and focus on only the projects with the very best preliminary results, leaving money "left over" to continue the work into a 4th year, a request called a "no cost extension" or "NCE".

Last week we learned that the NCE might not be considered or awarded. So money already allocated, that we did not spend because we were frugal, was taken away with no justification.

Now we are told with no advance notice that funding ends today. Fire everybody.

The notice was not written by NIH officials, since it was riddled with scientific errors. It was written by DOGE or other Trump lackeys and the NIH officer was ordered to send it out.

Does this help?

Was this part of Biden’s $3.2b covid package of 2022?

 

[The Original Happy Goat]

What is the new cancer drug?

That's not exactly what you are making it out to be. DEI and focus on research that only helps certain groups of people doesn't have a place in government funding. The government should fund projects that serve its constituents, not segments of them.

If private donors want to bankroll projects that disproportionately focus on or benefit minorities (whether race, ethnicity, religion, etc.), that's their prerogative.

I feel like that's a misunderstanding of how this stuff works. See my post in another thread about employer-sponsored skill training. There are things that we do that help all people, and sometimes, there are certain groups of people that are helped more, not because they are targeted, but just because they are more likely to suffer the harms we are trying to address. Of course any program that addresses poverty will disproportionately help black people. That's unavoidable.

So if researchers were previously required to specify how this might happen, and now they are having their research cut because of it, that's not only bad governance, it's bad science. Because good programs that could help all of us might get shut down simply because somewhere along the line someone required people to specify what the socioeconomic impacts could be.

This is incredibly stupid.