After the National Institutes of Health said it would slash its rates for facilities and administration costs, BU’s leadership warned the move could “affect the United States’ standing in the global competition in science.” Photo by Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images

Research

BU Leadership Strongly Opposes NIH Move to Cut Funding for “Research That Helps Improve Human Health and Save Lives”

In a related action, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the NIH from implementing its rate changes

Boston University has said that “we strongly support” a lawsuit filed Monday by the Association of American Universities (AAU) seeking to halt the National Institutes of Health from drastically cutting a vital component of medical, biomedical, and public health research funding. BU has been a member of the AAU, an organization of 71 leading research universities, since 2012.

The AAU suit, filed jointly in Massachusetts with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the American Council on Education, aims to place a nationwide injunction on an NIH push to substantially reduce the payments that partially reimburse research institutions for expenses incurred in hosting a study, such as maintaining facilities and core equipment and complying with legal reporting requirements.

In a separate yet related action, filed Monday in Massachusetts’ district court by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, 22 states also called for the NIH’s facilities and administration costs policy change to be set aside. And late on Monday, a federal judge gave the attorneys general an initial victory, and temporarily blocked the NIH from implementing its rate changes. The judge gave the agency until Friday, February 14, to oppose the commonwealth’s filing and scheduled a hearing for February 21. (Massachusetts is the third-biggest state recipient of NIH money, trailing only California and New York.)

A third lawsuit was also filed Monday by a group that includes the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association for Schools and Programs of Public Health, and the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals. Just before midnight, a court issued a nationwide temporary restraining order in that case, pausing the rate change.

If the NIH’s action is allowed to stand, it could directly impact BU’s efforts to improve Americans’ health and well-being, significantly reducing a source of funding that has helped drive major breakthroughs by the University’s researchers—like a bionic pancreas now being used by more than 15,000 Americans with type 1 diabetes, a Time invention of the year that more accurately detects skin cancer, and the nation’s longest-running study of heart health.

A statement from the AAU and the organizations that co-filed its suit said NIH’s rate reduction, announced late last week, would harm “the ability of research universities to continue doing critical NIH research” and “undermine universities’ essential training of the next generation of biomedical and health science researchers.” It also said the “proposed actions run afoul of the longstanding regulatory frameworks governing federal grants and foundational principles of administrative law.”

In a joint letter, BU’s president, provost, and associate provost ad interim for research said the policy could have an adverse effect on the University’s operations. They also echoed other national education and research leaders in highlighting the potential negative consequences for America’s global leadership in science and medical research.

“The impact of these proposed changes would be felt far beyond our own campus,” wrote President Melissa L. Gilliam, Provost Gloria Waters, and Associate Provost ad interim Thomas Bifano. “Not only could this policy have real ramifications on research projects that improve human life, but it could also affect the United States’ standing in the global competition in science. Our nation has a long history of our government working closely with our colleges and universities—this partnership is why the United States has long been the world’s leader in furthering groundbreaking scientific research. It is crucial that this relationship remains strong.”

In their complaint, the states’ attorneys general argued the NIH’s “unlawful action” would “devastate critical public health research at universities and research institutions in the United States. Without relief from NIH’s action, these institutions’ cutting-edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt.”

“Massachusetts is the medical research capital of the country,” Campbell said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “We are the proud home of nation-leading universities and research institutions that save lives, create jobs, and help secure a better future. We will not allow the Trump Administration to unlawfully undermine our economy, hamstring our competitiveness, or play politics with our public health.”

Facilities and administration (F&A) costs, sometimes known as “indirect” costs, are calculated as a percentage of a research grant’s funds. The current average F&A cost rate is around 27 percent, according to the NIH, but can rise above 50 percent for many research-intensive universities and hospitals. The agency, which had a 2024 budget of more than $47 billion and is the nation’s primary public funder of medical research, had said it would now cap that rate at 15 percent.

At BU—the fourth-largest private, not-for-profit, residential research university in the US with $580 million in total research awards in fiscal year 2024—the cut would equate to approximately $65 million in lost funding per year.

“The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” NIH said in a statement late last week announcing the new rate. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead. NIH is accordingly imposing a standard indirect cost rate on all grants of 15%.”

In a message on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, NIH said this change “will save more than $4B a year effective immediately.”

Many groups representing scientists and researchers reacted to the announcement with alarm. Science reported the plan “quickly drew howls of protest from the US biomedical research community,” noting that “some are already arguing the NIH action is illegal.” Research funding is typically split into two main buckets: direct and F&A costs. Direct costs cover researchers’ salaries and travel costs, as well as equipment and materials that will be used for a study. But they don’t help pay for core or shared lab equipment and spaces, keeping the lights and heat on, high-speed computing and data storage, radiation protection and other safety measures, research support staff and administration, janitorial staff to clean labs—those costs all fall into the F&A bucket. Without adequate funding for those F&A costs, many researchers have argued, much important medical and biomedical research would have to halt. 

In a statement over the weekend, AAU President Barbara R. Snyder challenged the argument that F&A costs are merely unnecessary overhead expenses and said they “are real and necessary costs of conducting the groundbreaking research that has led to countless breakthroughs in the past decades. A cut to F&A reimbursements for NIH grants is quite simply a cut to the life-saving medical research that helps countless American families.”

At BU, the NIH has supported a myriad of studies. They include projects advancing our understanding on a range of science and medical issues, many with direct positive impacts for patients: BU is home to one of just two National Biocontainment Laboratories in the country dedicated to studying infectious diseases, the world’s largest and longest-running study of centenarians, one of the nation’s longest-running studies of heart health, and major studies of Alzheimer’s and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Senator Ed Markey (Hon.’04) (D-Mass.) has called the funding cut an attack on Massachusetts.

“We are the center of biomedical innovation, and this administration will hurt families just by attempting to bully Massachusetts and other research centers in the United States,” Markey told the Boston Globe.

Proponents of the 15 percent rate argue that because universities and other institutions accept lower rates from foundations and other research funders, they can do the same with the federal government. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which many see as being a playbook for the current Trump administration, says, “Congress should cap the indirect cost rate paid to universities so that it does not exceed the lowest rate a university accepts from a private organization to fund research efforts.”

But as the Washington Post reports, researchers counter that “NIH’s high rate of funding for indirect costs helped subsidize the infrastructure necessary for their work,” telling the newspaper that the government’s higher rate is what allowed them to balance lower reimbursements from foundations and other groups. In addition, many foundations allow some of the F&A costs to be charged directly as part of the cost of the grant.

The president of the American Council on Education—a more than 100-year-old higher education nonprofit of which BU is a founding member—said the move to slash F&A funding would sabotage decades of US leadership in health research.

“This decision is short-sighted, naive, and dangerous,” said Ted Mitchell, a former US undersecretary of education. “It will be celebrated wildly by our competitors, who will see this for what it is—a surrender of US supremacy in medical research. It is a self-inflicted wound that, if not reversed, will have dire consequences on US jobs, global competitiveness, and the future growth of a skilled workforce.”

That statement was echoed by the head of the Council on Governmental Relations, Matt Owens, who told the Washington Post that the move was a “surefire way to cripple lifesaving research and innovation.” BU and Boston Medical Center, the University’s primary teaching hospital, are members of the association, which is focused on the impact of federal policies on research institutions.

“Boston University is committed to supporting the groundbreaking work being done by our researchers in labs across our campuses and around the world,” wrote BU’s leadership in its letter, “and we want you to know this remains a top priority for us as an institution and community.”