Mike's Blog

As FY25 comes to a close, most people at NIH are simply hoping to catch their breath before we learn what awaits us in FY26. The budget is (as typical) still pretty murky. The president has submitted a budget request which included an overall 40% reduction in total NIH funding as well as a reorganization plan. Bear in mind that Congress merely regards the President’s Budget as a suggestion. What we’ve seen with Congressional hearings on the budget have been uniformly uninformative. Little has emerged from the House. On the Senate side, the Appropriations Committee did vote out their bill giving NIH a $400M increase relative to FY25. There is also language specifically rejecting a 15% indirect cost rate as well as any NIH reorganization. This bill still requires full Senate approval and then will need to be reconciled with whatever comes from the House, so there is still a long way to go. And then there is still the possibility of a shutdown if the House and Senate cannot come to agreement.

As far as grants go, the CTSA Program has been quite successful in achieving alignment with agency priorities for nearly 200 distinct grant actions. There may be a few more over the next couple of weeks as we await final decisions on certain contract actions. Overall, there were 61 hub awards with an average ‘haircut’ of only 2.27%. Over one third had no cuts at all and only 15% experienced cuts of over 5%.

We have received all necessary approvals for the Fall Program meeting with the NIH Director as our keynote speaker. As a reminder, due to our inability to support CTSA activities at the spring ACTS meeting, the Enterprise Committees and other groups will be also meeting during this time. Hopefully, the arrangements with the hotel will be finalized by the time you read this.

Enjoy what remains of summer. 

There’s always hope for something. Just not always… not always what we want. 

- James S.A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods