NIH Foreign Research Restrictions Significantly Impact Quarter of U.S. Scientists

The National Institutes of Health announced in May 2025 that it would no longer allow American researchers to share their $47 billion in federal grants with research partners abroad, a policy the Trump administration justified as increasing accountability and transparency. A STAT survey of 989 NIH-funded scientists conducted between January and February 2026 found that 25% reported their research had been impacted a great deal or a fair amount by the restrictions. The ban forced researchers like Christopher Sassetti to abandon tuberculosis studies in Peru and South Africa, switching to less optimal alternatives using cell lines and macaque samples, while Andres Vidal-Gadea lost a Netherlands collaboration for Duchenne muscular dystrophy research. The policy led to an eight-employee layoff at FlyBase, a 30-year-old fruit fly genome database essential for studying 75% of human disease genes, and the consortium now seeks $500,000 annually to sustain its Cambridge team after NIH support was removed.

NIH foreign subaward ban and its widespread impact on U.S. researchers

• ▪The National Institutes of Health has a $47 billion biomedical funding budget
• ▪The STAT survey of NIH-supported scientists found that 20% of respondents said they had been affected a little by the foreign subaward policy change
• ▪The National Institutes of Health announced in May 2025 that it would no longer allow American researchers to share their federal grants with research partners abroad
• ▪A STAT survey of nearly 1,000 NIH-supported scientists found that 25% of respondents said their research had been impacted a great deal or a fair amount by the move away from foreign subawards
• ▪The STAT survey of 989 NIH-funded scientists was conducted between January 28 and February 18, 2026 in partnership with the MassINC Polling Group

Disruption to specific research projects and clinical trials

• ▪About 75% of known human disease-causing genes have a Drosophila melanogaster counterpart
• ▪The FlyBase grant was restored in February 2026 following legal action by Harvard University
• ▪Andres Vidal-Gadea found collaborators in the Netherlands in March 2025 to conduct mouse experiments, but the collaboration fell through after the National Institutes of Health foreign subaward ban
• ▪Among STAT survey respondents impacted by the foreign subaward policy, 28% said they moved the work of their international collaborators to U.S.-based institutions
• ▪Christopher Sassetti, a tuberculosis researcher at UMass Chan Medical School, has not been able to resume foreign partnerships since his National Institutes of Health subawards were banned in May 2025
• ▪The FlyBase consortium is asking the wider fly research community to contribute around $500,000 annually to keep the University of Cambridge group curating the database
• ▪Andres Vidal-Gadea, a molecular neuroethologist at Illinois State University, studies the function of genes to find ways to stop the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy
• ▪Eight FlyBase employees were laid off in summer 2025 after a National Institutes of Health grant supporting work at Harvard University, Indiana University Bloomington, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Cambridge became a casualty of the White House's freeze on funding to Harvard

Administrative challenges and workarounds for affected scientists

• ▪The National Institutes of Health released the outlines of its subaward replacement system in September 2025
• ▪In June 2025, the National Institutes of Health created a foreign supplement model that allowed scientists to convert foreign components into a supplement functioning as a separate award linked to the main grant
• ▪Converting existing foreign subawards to the National Institutes of Health supplement model often took many months due to mass firings at the National Institutes of Health in 2025 and continued departure of grantmaking officials and staff
• ▪Scientists with existing National Institutes of Health grants containing foreign subawards in May 2025 were initially offered two options: move their international collaborators' work to the U.S. or wind it down and return funds to the National Institutes of Health

Perspective of International research collaborators

• ▪Eight FlyBase employees were laid off in summer 2025 after the National Institutes of Health grant supporting their work became a casualty of funding restrictions
• ▪The FlyBase consortium must raise approximately $500,000 annually from the fly research community to sustain the University of Cambridge group's database curation work