Jayanta Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has called on the agency’s scientific leadership to immediately review all of their current and planned research activities to identify those that don’t align with agency priorities, according to an Aug. 15 internal memo obtained by Fierce Biotech.
Activities that don’t align with those priorities, which Bhattacharya outlined in the same document, "may be restricted, paused, not renewed or terminated," he wrote.
When possible, staff are “encouraged to renegotiate programs and projects to ensure their compliance,” the NIH director wrote. “Please ensure the directives in this memo are implemented without delay.”
The priorities, part of a "unified strategy," are also shared in a director's statement published Aug. 15, but this page omits any mention of the internal review.
"I am sending this memo to clarify our priorities and ensure efforts to fulfill our mission are aligned across the agency," Bhattacharya wrote in the memo. "I want to start by expressing my gratitude for your advice and input thus far, and I look forward to our continued collaboration."
A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson confirmed to Fierce that the review is being conducted. "We want to make sure that the current ongoing research or new potential projects relate to the priorities outlined in the uniform strategy," the spokesperson said.
Relevant NIH personnel, including leaders of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, program officers and internal principal investigators, are to individually review all contract solicitations and funding announcements, applications for new or renewed grants, active grants and contracts, cooperative agreements and internal research and training programs. The memo did not provide a timeline for how long this extensive inspection is expected to take.
"This review is already underway. The purpose of the memo is to provide institutes and centers with clear priorities, ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most," an NIH spokesperson told Fierce on Aug. 18. "This is not business as usual; it is a deliberate course correction to strengthen accountability and ensure NIH funds research that delivers measurable impact for all Americans."
“Under normal circumstances, it would take a layered approach and months of effort to do this well,” Jeremy Berg, Ph.D., former director of the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences, told Fierce. “My impression is that he expects this to take days. This speaks to this being a political rather than a serious scientific process.”
The priorities detailed by Bhattacharya have largely been outlined before and include training future scientists, bolstering reproducibility in research studies and building a platform for real-world data. But some of them are more controversial, including “furthering our understanding of autism” and emphasizing research on the supposed harms of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents.
Bhattacharya’s boss, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has long espoused viewpoints in line with the conspiracy theory that vaccines can cause autism. Studies have found no link between vaccines and autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is part of the HHS.
Bhattacharya also reinforced the NIH’s intention to move away from animal testing and to increase scrutiny on research collaborations with foreign institutions.
One priority hearkens back to Bhattacharya’s history as a researcher of health disparities, but, while writing that the “NIH will continue to support research that advances the health of all Americans” regardless of demographics like race or sex, he also said that such research will be limited.
“Investigators must employ specific and measurable concepts in health disparities research” such as redlining and housing discrimination, Bhattacharya wrote. “However, broad or subjective claims—such as attributing worse health outcomes in a particular population to poorly measured factors like systemic racism—should not be presented as established background facts.”
Other listed priorities include studying links between nutrition and chronic disease, boosting artificial intelligence efforts and advancing new treatments and preventions for HIV/AIDS.
Given that work not fitting these priorities could be cut, the NIH research review has the potential to further defund research areas that have already been extensively targeted by the agency such as racial health disparities, the health effects of climate change, COVID-19, gender identity and the health needs of intersex people.
Berg agrees that misalignment with the “often poorly defined” priorities may serve as justification for canceling otherwise sound projects.
“It is like asking all of your children to justify what they are doing to help the family, and if you think their answers aren’t good enough, it’s off to the orphanage,” Berg added.
A recent report from the Government Accountability Office, an independent watchdog, found that the NIH violated the law by withholding funds appropriated by Congress. And, while the Trump administration has proposed slashing the NIH’s budget by $18 billion, a bipartisan Senate committee recently rebuffed that plan, instead approving a proposal to move forward with a budget increase of $400 million.
The bill, approved by the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations in a 26-3 vote (PDF) on July 31, also aims to keep Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding largely intact after Trump announced plans to halve the center’s budget.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:30 a.m. ET on Aug. 18 to add a new statement from the NIH.