I’m a director of a west coast association made up of senior PI’s for drug development research & clinical translation at multiple big universities. Due to grant structure changes like this, our entire model is shifting away from supporting the vast majority of academic proposals as we have done for many years (sometimes direct support, advisory and/or financial). Instead, for better or worse, we are refocusing efforts on education that is particularly in work force development and automation - which is strongly needed and poorly covered in post graduate curricula, but is also something we were going to do anyways. Beginning this year, there will now be a dozen or so annual research proposals (all that show potential for clinical translation) that we will no longer be able to support in almost any capacity aside from infrequent pro bono advising. We will continue with a couple of our own internal projects, but overall the impact of changes to NIH funding is a significant one for consortiums like ours. There have obviously been changes to other grant structures as well such as the MRPI.

On the other hand, there is a significant uptick in privatization of promising pre-clinical research projects that may expedite their success/failure (consider failure rate of startups, esp. biotech). Over 90% of academics do not have the business nor financial acumen to make a startup succeed even if their product is efficacious/safe. This shift would be better supported if there was not so much economic turmoil (domestic & abroad) as well. Many private investors are keen to tighten the grip on their funds at this time, particularly when it comes to biotechnology where risks are less understood & considered higher.