Colorado researchers warn of lost advances and lost generation of scientists due to federal cuts

Colorado researchers described the harrowing impact, uncertainty and havoc of potentially massive federal budget cuts to health programs Tuesday at CU Anschutz Medical Center.

A collection of scientists, all pursuing breakthroughs in their fields, and top administrators, held a roundtable discussion in a large research building, to tell their stories to Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat.

Barbara Johnson, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention biologist, who has spent her career studying mosquito-borne diseases around the world, spoke about critical research into the disease she’s battling: ALS. Also called Lou Gehrig's disease, it’s a progressive neurodegenerative disease of the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, with no cure.

“It's unclear to me what NIH grants have or will be cut,” Johnson said, using voice assist on her phone since ALS has damaged her ability to speak. She said there is a “panic” in the ALS community about cuts to funding to the National Institutes of Health for ALS research and clinical trials. “Remove all hope that any of us with ALS will live beyond the two to five-year expected survival. NIH funding cuts remove the hope that ALS will ever be a livable disease.”

Another scientist described groundbreaking progress made, thanks to federally funded research, in understanding and fighting diseases like childhood leukemia. That’s cancer of blood-forming tissues, including bone marrow and the lymphatic system.

“We have gone from a uniformly fatal disease 50 years ago to a disease for which those children are treated,” said Dr. Lia Gore, who leads CU’s pediatric hematological cancer program. She credited NIH funding and scientific collaboration.

The next generation of both researchers and research careers are at stake if health budgets are slashed, she said.

“We know how to do this. And I think the biggest fear that we have is loss of the generation, right?” Gore said. “We are losing generations. It takes precisely four years to lose 30 years of the education and training that we can do on this campus and with our colleagues around the country. And without that, it will take another 20 to 30 years to make up for that.”

Courtesy of CU Anschutz Medical Campus

Earlier, Hickenlooper toured a cancer lab down the hall.

Inside the lab, a young researcher named Sheera Rosenbaum, wore a white lab coat as she transferred fluids using a pipette. 

Rosenbaum is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology. She studies something called triple-negative breast cancer and said she was concerned by possible cuts to NIH funding.

“Those are going to have a huge impact on us. I mean, I'm looking to start my own lab one day and I'm sort of in that important part of my career,” where having money for her work is key, she said. “Unfortunately with lower funds, I think it's going to make that a lot harder. And yeah, it definitely impacts how I think about my career and what's next.”

A spokeswoman said CU Anschutz received two termination notices as a subcontractor on grants related to vaccine hesitancy and Alaska Native communities, as well as through Columbia University for research on the link between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes. Those grants total approximately $1.7 million.

“We continue to receive awards as primary recipients from federal sponsors and other organizations, and continue to work in partnership with other universities on critical research as is the nature of science,” said Julia Milzer, Director of Media Relations. “Our research community remains focused on our vital work to improve human health and save lives.”

No one has been laid off at CU Anschutz as it relates to the federal transition, she said, via email.

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have argued the federal government is bloated and they aim to attack waste, fraud and abuse, though they’ve so far provided little evidence of it. 

The push, happening on a large scale in just a few weeks, has thrown university research institutions into crisis mode.

“The strength of this campus is unparalleled and the fragility of the ecosystem here is also unparalleled,” said Tom Gronow, CEO of UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.

He said their work is now under attack, from the pharmaceutical industry, seeking reforms that could hurt the bottom line of hospitals, to federal cuts to Medicaid, which pays the bills for many Coloradans who most sorely need health care.

“Let's be thoughtful about how we tackle the health care crisis that's ahead of us,” Gronow said. “But by attacking multiple things at once, we're going to create a lot of chaos and instability. We'll have to make decisions around what we continue to do as a campus, which is not a position that we want to be in, which will inevitably impact patients at the end of the day.”

The chancellor of CU Anschutz said the campus is in the business of hope and that’s their commitment. 

“It's being challenged and it's having an enormous impact on the work that we do today and unfortunately threatens to have an even greater impact on the work that we do. And that's the reality of what we're facing,” said Don Elliman.

Courtesy of CU Anschutz Medical Campus

Another researcher, Greg Ebel, who directs Colorado State University's Center for Vector Borne Infectious Diseases, said NIH investments in his lab allow it to study thousands of mosquito samples from around the globe. That helps humans understand West Nile virus.

He said the lab stepped up and quickly pivoted to develop and administer COVID tests when the pandemic first struck.

“We were able to step in as this little academic lab and say, well, ‘We can start testing workers from long-term care facilities on their way to work,’” Ebel said.

Investment in scientific infrastructure made such an emergency response possible, he said, but is now at risk.

The hiring of staff, like for example graduate students, is on pause, as broader cutbacks could be coming, researchers said.

“I don't know what will happen. It's the uncertainty that's so hard right now for all of us,” said Judy Regensteiner, Director of the Ludeman Center for Women’s Health Research at the Colorado School of Medicine. “This is a tough time and I spend a lot of time every day talking to early career scientists trying to reassure them that science will prevail. But I don't know when. I don't know how. And I think it's really important to focus on women's health.”

Hickenlooper said he thought his Republican colleagues in the Senate see the damage that’s being done and that most Americans “may be suspicious about certain aspects of science, but they believe in the progress that it creates.”

That’s why stories about the harm from cuts to things like cancer research are so important for Americans to learn about, he said.

“They don't recognize it yet, but they will if we'd find ways to talk about it, make sure that people's stories get heard,” Hickenlooper said.