Top universities face hiring freezes as federal research funding at risk
Princeton University and the University of California system have announced hiring freezes due to potential cuts in federal research funding, joining other top institutions like Harvard and Duke.
Scripps News
A new report suggests up to 7.2 million Americans ages 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s disease, an increase of about 300,000 cases of the mind-robbing disease from a year ago.
The Alzheimer’s Association’s annual facts and figures report, released on April 29, said the total annual cost of caring for people living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia will reach $384 billion in 2025. That figure doesn’t include the cost of unpaid care from 12 million family members and friends who provide billions of hours of care valued at more than $400 billion, according to the report.
“The impact of Alzheimer’s keeps growing and more and more families are affected,” said Elizabeth Edgerly, the Alzheimer’s Association’s senior director of community programs and services. “The costs are rising, so it’s more important than ever to find ways to address this growing issue.”
The upswing in cases comes as the Trump administration has proposed or enacted steep cuts at the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s main source of federal grants for biomedical research, including Alzheimer’s and dementia.
George Vradenburg, who chairs UsAgainstAlzheimer’s, said abrupt NIH funding cuts to universities studying Alzheimer’s could harm patients.
“We simply are losing a lot of time and a lot of insights for patients and families that support them,” Vradenburg told USA TODAY.
Do people want to know if they are at risk?
Alzheimer’s researchers believe the disease takes root with brain changes before memory and thinking problems surface. Researchers are developing blood tests that could lead to earlier diagnosis and give patients access to drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
There are two FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drugs targeting amyloid-beta protein, which accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The two drugs ‒ Eli Lilly’s Kisunla and Eisai and Biogen’s drug Leqembi ‒ include warnings for MRI-visible injuries called amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, or ARIA, which can include brain swelling and tiny bleeds at the surface of the brain.
The Alzheimer’s Association released its survey alongside its annual report to gauge attitudes about the disease, early detection and diagnosis, potential early access to treatments and research.
The survey of more than 1,700 Americans aged 45 and older revealed that 79% would want to know if they had Alzheimer’s disease before having symptoms. About 9 in 10 people would want to take a blood or other simple test if available, and 58% would accept moderate to very high risk while taking medication to slow the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
The report also said the doctors must be prepared to help people interpret tests that detect early stages of the mind-robbing disease.
To diagnose Alzheimer’s, a doctor must examine a patient and conduct memory and thinking tests. Patients also might need to visit specialty clinics to undergo brain scans or spinal taps to detect whether the person has a telltale buildup of amyloid-beta protein.
Edgerly said there’s a shortage of neurologists and geriatricians who often diagnose the disease. Patients face long wait times to see these specialists, Edgerly said.
She said primary care doctors might be able to play a larger role in diagnosing patients if reliable blood tests emerge, but she said these doctors will need training to help patients and families.
“There’s a huge need for physicians to be able to identify it, and so primary care is part of it,” Edgerly said.
Is Alzheimer’s research at risk?
If diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, more than 4 in 5 adults would be willing to participate in a clinical trial studying an experimental treatment to slow or cure the disease, the survey said.
But scientists told USA TODAY that key research studies have been halted or interrupted in recent weeks.
Former NIH Director Francis Collins warned research cuts would harm patients in studies or clinical trials.
“Those are people’s lives at risk,” Collins told “60 Minutes.”
José Alejandro Luchsinger-Stuart, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, said the federal government’s funding cuts halted his multistate study of Alzheimer’s and related dementias in people with prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes.
“We were interrupted smack in the middle of the study,” Luchsinger-Stuart told USA TODAY.
On March 10, Luchsinger-Stuart was instructed to immediately stop work on his five-year study. Citing the New York City Ivy League university’s failure to combat antisemitism, the federal government removed $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia. The Trump administration has demanded Columbia make widespread changes to its disciplinary policies and admissions before the funding is restored.
Columbia has tried to negotiate with the federal government to reinstate funding rather than appeal the termination, Luchsinger-Stuart said.
The Columbia-led study relied on annual grants of more than $16 million from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Now that the funding has been halted, some research partners at 29 universities are laying off workers and closing study offices because they can’t make rent payments, Luchsinger-Stuart said.
The study tracked 1,700 people to assess cognitive decline in people with diabetes or pre-diabetes.
Luchsinger-Stuart said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raised questions about Alzheimer’s researchers’ focus on beta-amyloid as the cause of the mind-robbing disease. He noted that his research team wanted to answer a similar question: How does beta-amyloid affect patients with prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes?
But without federal funding, the research project won’t continue.
“The infrastructure of the study is falling apart,” Luchsinger-Stuart said. “We just stopped cold with absolute uncertainty about how we were going to wrap up things that were pending in the study.”
Study nixed because it ‘had the word diversity in the title’
Another study by the University of California, Davis sought to answer the dementia risk in racially diverse populations. Researchers were looking at how vascular risks, such as high blood pressure, might contribute to dementia.
But on March 24, NIH informed the research team that a $10 million grant was being terminated. In a letter to the research team, NIH said the “award related to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) no longer effectuates agency priorities.”
Charles DeCarli, a professor of neurology and Victor and Genevieve Orsi Chair in Alzheimer’s Research at U.C. Davis, said the research team and study participants were stunned and confused.
“Our study got terminated because it had the word diversity in the title,” DeCarli said.
Days after the funding was terminated, DeCarli and UC Davis appealed the termination, arguing that while the study recruited diverse populations, the intent was to collect a broad set of data to benefit all Americans. The funding has been fully restored, DeCarli said.
NIH has paused 14 research grants across several universities due to compliance issues such as DEI language or antisemitism issues, said Andrew Nixon, HHS director of communications.
“NIH remains committed to advancing groundbreaking research in Alzheimer’s disease,” Nixon said. “However, we also have a responsibility to ensure that all grant proposals align with the established policies, including ensuring that language used in these proposals reflects NIH’s commitment to nondiscriminatory, merit-based research practices.”
The funding pause caused disruption at UC Davis, with about 50 study volunteers dropping out when they were informed about the temporary funding pause. The study has enrolled about 1,700 toward a goal of 2,250 with an equal mix of white, Black and Hispanic participants.
“The participants were very confused,” DeCarli said. “The system was closing down, and then it needed to restart.”
