Federal officials said a Food and Drug Administration lab in St. Louis' Central West End will remain open as a decision to close the facility appears to have been reversed.
Employees at the FDA’s St. Louis-based Office of Pharmaceutical Quality Research said they learned in the past days that the newly created Department of Government Efficiency had planned to terminate the facility’s lease at 645 S. Newstead Ave.
However, employees said they had since learned the lab would keep its lease. An FDA spokesperson confirmed the lab would remain open in an email Wednesday afternoon.
Employees were taken aback by the original announcement and the abrupt about-face, said Nathan Reed, a chemist who works at the lab. It was unclear if the people who worked there would still have jobs if the lab shut down.
“Without this facility, our job functions can't be completed,” he said. “There weren't any protocols to even reference what would happen with this, because it was so out of left field.”
DOGE in recent days announced it was closing an FDA lab in St. Louis. DOGE did not state its address, but it matched the description of the facility in the Central West End. The agency listed an approximately 52,000-square-foot FDA lab on the “terminated leases” portion of its website where it tracks slashed government spending.
The agency estimated canceling the lease would save the government $2.5 million annually.
Reed said approximately 70 people—mostly scientists—work at the lab, which evaluates the quality of medicines and other products.
The Office of Pharmaceutical Quality Research conducts drug testing and “research that supports quality assessment, inspection, quality standard and policy development, education, surveillance, and rapid response activities,” according to the FDA’s website.
The building recently received a $10 million renovation by architectural firm Chiodini Architects, according to the company’s website. The company’s online portfolio shows it contains laboratories, classrooms and research areas.
“Most employees found out yesterday when there was a news story that broke and that had made the rounds,” said another chemist, who did not want to be publicly identified because of fear of professional retribution. “I heard that the only reason anyone knew was because the owner of the building was notified, and she called and tried to figure out what was going on.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has, in the past two months, attempted to dramatically decrease federal expenditures, cutting employees from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies.
“It’s stressful,” the chemist said. “There’s just random things happening from unknown sources.”
Other local FDA office members did not respond to requests for comment. A person who answered the phone at the St. Louis lab said they could not offer any information.
The space is vital to test products that keep people safe, employees said. The work requires specialized equipment that can test a wide range of medicines and products.
“I think [federal officials] are looking at these particular values and not understanding the work that's being done,” Reed said.
“A lot of the work we do is very ad hoc, there's something different that comes in the door that has some sense of urgency to it,” said the other chemist, who said in recent years the lab has tested hand sanitizers, sunscreens and other aerosol products. “These are things that require rapid responses, and you have to have the technology available to you to respond to an incredibly diverse set of drugs.”
DOGE has reported it has terminated the leases of two other St. Louis-based offices: the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which works with employers and unions to prevent labor disputes, and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which protects workspaces from security threats.
The latter reportedly already planned to shut its St. Louis office, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Another employee, who also did not want to be identified because of fear of retribution, said the lab’s workers had been shaken by the past few days.
“They saw a big number on a spreadsheet,” he said. “We all took these jobs because we wanted to help…. We’re all highly qualified. We could get higher-paying jobs, but we didn’t.”
