A government effort to cap funding from the National Institutes of Health could have grave effects on scientists and other researchers in Missouri who receive hundreds of millions of dollars every year in federal grants to do their work.
The NIH in 2024 granted more than $900 million in research grants to schools and other institutions in Missouri to research neurological disorders, infectious diseases and countless other pursuits.
Late last week, the NIH issued a bulletin to researchers that the federal agency planned to cap payments for facilities and administrative costs – sometimes called “indirect costs” – at 15% of grant awards.
The proposed cap is part of a raft of sweeping cost-cutting measures put in place by the Trump administration.
“NIH is obligated to carefully steward grant awards to ensure taxpayer dollars are used in ways that benefit the American people and improve their quality of life,” the federal bulletin read. “This rate will allow grant recipients a reasonable and realistic recovery of indirect costs while helping NIH ensure that grant funds are, to the maximum extent possible, spent on furthering its mission."
A federal judge in Massachusetts has placed a temporary hold on the plan after the Association of American Medical Colleges, which represents Washington University, St. Louis University and dozens of other medical schools and health systems, sued the administration.
A hearing on the case is scheduled for later this month.
Vital expenses
Indirect costs “support expenses that are essential to a university’s ability to conduct federally funded research, including laboratories, IT resources, utilities and administrative support to comply with mandatory regulations,” University of Missouri System President Mun Choi wrote earlier this week in a letter to the school's faculty and staff.
What the NIH refers to as indirect costs are actually vital expenditures, said Heather Pierce, senior director for science policy and regulatory council at the AAMC.
Those costs include electricity, water and other infrastructure. The cuts could mean more than $100 million slashed from the state’s NIH-funded research, according to reporting from the Missouri Independent.
“I think that there may be a lack of understanding that these costs are the real costs of doing research,” she said. “They are how we keep the light and the heat and and the security and the personnel going so that specific research projects can take place, and that's not well understood.”
Indirect cost rates can differ by project and institution but can constitute up to half of a grant’s total funding, Pierce said.
For example, the largest NIH grant awarded to the University of Missouri in 2024 was for infectious disease research at the Missouri Regional Biocontainment Laboratory. The work aims to “develop new approaches to prevent and treat infections, thereby improving … preparation for responding to an outbreak of emerging infectious disease,” according to the agency’s federal database.
Approximately 36% of that funding– $857,500 – was for indirect costs, according to the database.
The 15% cap, Pierce said, could be “devastating.”
“We might see scaling back of research programs, cutting down on enrollment in clinical trials, hiring freezes across the research,” she said. “[Institutions] not moving forward with various research agreements, with research contracts, and as a whole, the research mission would need to shrink.”
Schools respond
Washington University in 2024 received more than $730 million in NIH funding, the fourth most in the country, behind the University of California-San Francisco, Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan.
According to an analysis of NIH data, close to one-fourth of Wash U's 2024 NIH grant funding was for indirect costs. Capping the category at 15% would constitute a difference of close to $80 million.
In a letter to Washington University staff and students, administrators said they understand researchers are concerned but that the school is “engaged on multiple fronts.”
“Our leadership team is closely reviewing the policy, and our government relations team is engaging with congressional representatives and others to ensure that they understand the consequences of these cuts and are encouraged to act to address this threat to research and its many benefits to society,” wrote Chancellors Andrew D. Martin, David H. Perlmutter and Beverly Wendland in the Feb. 8 letter.
The NIH granted St. Louis University $26 million for 63 awards in 2024. The school issued a similar statement.
“SLU is monitoring these developments closely so that we can understand the details of what is happening and carefully analyze the impact of potential changes on our research operations,” the statement read. “The university remains committed to supporting our researchers as they continue to advance their research, which improves the lives of people in our region and around the globe.”
Choi’s letter encouraged faculty members and staff in the University of Missouri system to continue their work while the university, which received close to $70 million worth of agency funding last year, advocated for NIH support.
