The Trump administration has cancelled a $258 million programme that was working to develop vaccines against HIV, dealing a major blow to efforts to find a cure for the disease that causes AIDS.
The decision affects research teams at two leading American universities who were making important progress in the fight against HIV. The Trump administration has dealt a sharp blow to work on H.I.V. vaccines, terminating a $258 million program whose work was instrumental to the search for a vaccine.
Government health officials broke the news on Friday to the programme leaders at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute. Officials from the H.I.V. division of the National Institutes of Health delivered the news on Friday to the program’s two leaders, at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute.
The cancelled research wasn’t just about HIV – it was helping develop treatments for many other diseases as well. Both teams were collaborating with numerous other research partners. The work was broadly applicable to a wide range of treatments for other illnesses, from COVID drugs to snake antivenom and therapies for autoimmune diseases. Scientists were using what they learned to create medicines for COVID, snake bites, and diseases where the body’s immune system attacks itself.
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A senior government official explained that health leaders had reviewed the programme and decided not to continue with it. “The consortia for H.I.V./AIDS vaccine development and immunology was reviewed by N.I.H. leadership, which does not support it moving forward,” said a senior official at the agency who was not authorised to speak on the matter and asked not to be identified. Instead, the government wants to focus on using treatments that already exist to fight HIV. “N.I.H. expects to be shifting its focus toward using currently available approaches to eliminate H.I.V./AIDS,” the official said.
This programme cancellation is just one of several cuts the government has made to HIV research and prevention efforts. The program’s elimination is the latest in a series of cuts to H.I.V.-related initiatives, and to prevention of the disease in particular. The government has also stopped funding for a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine being developed by the pharmaceutical company Moderna. Separately, the N.I.H. also paused funding for a clinical trial of an H.I.V. vaccine made by Moderna.
Scientists leading the research expressed disappointment at losing funding for their successful work. “I find it very disappointing that, at this critical juncture, the funding for highly successful H.I.V. vaccine research programs should be pulled,” said Dennis Burton, an immunologist who led the program at Scripps. Dennis Burton, a scientist who led the programme at Scripps, said he was disappointed that funding had been pulled from successful research.
Also, health experts warn that these cuts will reverse decades of progress in fighting HIV. Public health experts say the cuts will derail hard-won progress against H.I.V. over the past few decades. The impact is already being felt across America and around the world.
The administration has also withheld money that was supposed to go to individual states for HIV prevention work. This week, the administration also withheld funds due to states and territories for H.I.V. prevention work. In Texas, health officials have told organisations receiving grants to stop all their HIV prevention activities for now. In Texas, the State Department of Health Services asked grantees to pause all activities “until further notice.” Meanwhile, in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, the health department has already been forced to lay off 10 staff members due to funding cuts. In Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, the health department has already had to lay off 10 staffers.
Already, many African countries have reported serious disruptions in their efforts to curb the epidemic.
