{"id":6873,"date":"2013-09-16T11:51:03","date_gmt":"2013-09-16T15:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=4354"},"modified":"2013-09-16T11:51:03","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T15:51:03","slug":"med-grapples-with-major-sequestration-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2013\/09\/16\/med-grapples-with-major-sequestration-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"MED Grapples with Major Sequestration Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Centers bracing for cuts, layoffs as NIH budget slashed<\/h2>\n
\"Research<\/a>
Research funding for the School of Medicine has fallen 16 percent from last year. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

No one knows the ultimate toll that federal sequestration will take on the Boston University Medical Campus. But its research centers have already seen cuts of up to 100 percent for fiscal 2013, necessitating layoffs and a renewed, urgent push to secure nongovernment funding sources.<\/p>\n

Research funding for the School of Medicine has fallen 16 percent from last year, says Karen Antman, MED dean and provost of the Medical Campus and the John Sandson Professor of Health Sciences. Virtually all of the drop is in funding for centers. \u201cBig center grants are being hit hardest,\u201d Antman says. And a conversation with MED researchers makes it clear the cuts are having a large ripple effect already.<\/p>\n

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) \u201cis making the right choices given the terrible position the Congress put them and us in, but it\u2019s awful for researchers and for the country,\u201d says Joseph P. Mizgerd, a MED professor of medicine, microbiology, and biochemistry and director of the Pulmonary Center. Mizgerd says the NIH\u2019s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) did not renew funding for a multiproject lung development center grant, now in its 20th year, a decision being appealed by principal investigator Wellington Cardoso, a MED professor of medicine and pathology. Sequestration \u201cis only the latest event in a decade of fading congressional support for biomedical research,\u201d Mizgerd says.<\/p>\n

David Atkinson, who lost federal funding for a 30-year multiproject center grant of cell biology and cardiovascular disease, says NIH cutbacks in the number of grants \u201cputs people\u2019s livelihoods in jeopardy. It impacts students halfway through their PhD research projects.\u201d Atkinson\u2019s ongoing, NHLBI-funded study had been receiving nearly $1.3 million a year, a grant that supported a staff of 30. \u201cI\u2019ve been here 38 years, and we went through a bad period in the 1980s, but it has never been this bad,\u201d he says. The sequestration cuts are being felt acutely by graduate students. \u201cI can\u2019t recruit PhD students,\u201d he says. \u201cScience is in danger of losing a whole generation because the positions are no longer there.\u201d Like his colleagues, Atkinson is looking for bridge funding and other means of support to continue his work \u201cby hook or by crook.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the NIH budget was cut 5 percent, MED faculty have been told to assume a 10 percent budget reduction, according to Antman. Faculty are on notice that they must carefully monitor spending on staff, supplies, and travel in this \u201ctime of uncertainty,\u201d when most federal funding agencies face deep cuts. The NIH is the largest sponsor of medical research, and its cuts translate to an estimated $1.5 billion nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are already used to being lean and efficient,\u201d says Antman. \u201cAll health science campuses are subject to these NIH cuts. How we manage them will determine if we remain competitive.\u201d She says that MED\u2019s \u201crelative lack of endowed chairs make it more difficult to recruit in competition with institutions with larger endowments.\u201d For now, the school is hiring only research faculty who already have grants in place. \u201cFor new grants, faculty need to write more proposals to be funded at the same rate,\u201d Antman says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very unfortunate situation,\u201d says\u00a0Gloria Waters<\/a>, recently named vice president and associate provost for research for both the Charles River and the Medical Campus. Waters cited the recent 40 percent reduction in funding for the ongoing\u00a0Framingham Heart Study<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s largest and longest-running epidemiological studies, begun in 1948 by the NIH and run by Boston University since 1971. Those cuts will result in 19 layoffs of clinical and administrative staff beginning November 1, Antman says.<\/p>\n

Despite the sequestration cuts, the Medical Campus is \u201cstill recruiting some fabulous faculty members,\u201d Waters says, and the amount of research continues to increase as MED hires research-active faculty to replace retiring faculty less actively engaged in research.<\/p>\n

On its\u00a0sequestration fact sheet<\/a>, the NIH, the world\u2019s leading supporter of biomedical research, estimates that federally mandated cuts will translate to 700 fewer research grants to institutions compared to the previous year. On August 1, University President Robert A. Brown was among 186 university leaders to sign an\u00a0open letter<\/a>, published in the print edition of\u00a0Politico,<\/em> calling for a restoration of federal funding for research and warning of a coming \u201cinnovation deficit\u201d if funding cuts persist. In 2011, with nearly $132 million in grants, BU\u2019s Medical Campus ranked 47th of approximately 2,600 organizations receiving NIH funding for research. NIH-funded research is the foundation of a medical innovation sector that employs one million US citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere really is no replacement for this money, so basically faculty are needing to figure out how to carry out work on smaller budgets,\u201d says Waters. \u201cFor some it can mean taking a technician off a grant; others may need to let several people in their lab go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most at risk is basic research, the high-risk projects that ask fundamental questions without any attempt to \u201cartificially infuse the research with clinically oriented questions,\u201d says Darrell Kotton, a MED professor of medicine and pathology and director of the\u00a0Center for Regenerative Medicine<\/a> (CReM). \u201cSequestration comes on the heels of the downturn of availability of funding, so investigators are already low on their reserves.\u201d Kotton predicts that if basic research cuts persist, \u201cscientists will tend to be a little less adventurous and more risk-averse. That\u2019s a paradigm shift,\u201d and the \u201creal exciting science\u201d will suffer\u2014something Kotton says the next generation will pay for.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0BU Today<\/em> story was written by\u00a0Susan Seligson<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Centers bracing for cuts, layoffs as NIH budget slashed No one knows the ultimate toll that federal sequestration will take on the Boston University Medical Campus. But its research centers have already seen cuts of up to 100 percent for fiscal 2013, necessitating layoffs and a renewed, urgent push to secure nongovernment funding sources. Research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}