Federal funding cuts at University of Minnesota antiviral research center leave researchers scrambling

Federal budget cuts this week have undercut research at the University of Minnesota that was closing in on a better COVID-19 antiviral therapy and first-ever treatments for Ebola and other life-threatening infectious diseases.

The U-led Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center received notice this week that its federal funding was terminated as part of a broader purge of COVID-19 projects by President Donald Trump’s administration. The multimillion-dollar cuts left research leaders scrambling to determine which studies could continue while they appeal the loss of funding from the National Institutes of Health, and how they could support the ongoing work of students with academic obligations.

“Students and postdocs can’t stop their studies just because a grant ended,” said Reuben Harris, a co-leader of the Midwest AViDD Center, which is based at the U but includes 16 other research institutions nationwide.

A letter received Monday from an NIH extramural research director said “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.”

The Minnesota Department of Health similarly learned this week that it was losing $226 million in federal support for everything from disease surveillance and lab testing to community vaccination and illness-prevention campaigns.

Harris said it is wasteful to cut funding midway in the Midwest center’s five-year mission to create “off-the-shelf” antivirals against emerging infectious diseases. Only about a quarter of the work was focused on COVID, he said. The rest searched for treatments against Ebola, Lassa and Zika — viruses capable of causing mass infections and severe illnesses. Eight other U.S. drug discovery centers lost funding as well.

The funding cuts could have negative downstream effects for the drug industry. Manufacturers are great at taking proven compounds and turning them into approved therapies, but someone needs to do the basic research on the compounds in the first place, Harris said Thursday.

“This program really fills that gap in the pipeline.”

COVID has remained endemic since the national public health emergency was lifted on May 11, 2023. In Minnesota, more than 19,000 COVID-related hospitalizations have been reported since that time, along with 1,894 deaths, mostly among the elderly.

U researchers are trying to develop a more effective COVID antiviral than Paxlovid that is easier to tolerate — something like “a tangerine-flavored gummy bear” rather than a bad-tasting pill, Harris said. “We’re on our way to doing that, having a broad-acting, better-tasting, more effective orally available [medication].”

The researchers also have explored combining multiple COVID antiviral compounds into one drug, an approach that substantially improved outcomes and reduced complications for patients with HIV.

Researchers can appeal the loss of funding, first to the acting NIH director and then to an appeals board. Harris said “a lot” of job cuts are likely at the U center if the appeal fails, which will be hard on junior-level scientists at a time when research positions are disappearing nationwide.

“This is not only killing a bunch of projects before they are finished,” he said, “but it’s negatively impacting the careers of a lot of young people.”