Dr. Lustig said the loss of researchers and the research framework would be hard to recover, even if lost funding is eventually restored, because of the logistics of having to re-hire people and recreate what is gone.
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September 2025“The research infrastructure that is required to do these sorts of complex studies requires a huge team,” he said. “And if you lost funding from your lab, that team’s got to go. And once that thing shuts down, it’ll be years to recreate what currently exists.”
Thomas R. Collins is a freelance medical writer based in Florida.
Prospect of Greater Reliance on Industry Prompts Reflection
The prospect of deep cuts to federal research funding in the U.S. has sent researchers and administrators scurrying to find other ways to fund research.
And a likelihood that they bring up again and again is more reliance on industry funding. But it is an avenue that comes with some complications and trepidation, researchers acknowledge. This avenue itself may be a bit shaky, as some pharmaceutical companies are downsizing; Moderna, recently announced that it’s trimming 10% of its global workforce (Reuters. https://tinyurl.com/264rxtex). Industry layoffs in general rose 3% in 2024 compared to 2023 (Fierce Biotech. https://tinyurl.com/yzjmj7ee), while venture capital investments in biotech are the lowest they’ve been in a decade (PitchBook. https://tinyurl.com/y5uvkt35).
Although industry-funded studies are a critical part of getting new, life-changing therapies across the regulatory finish line, a greater reliance on industry funding means a greater risk of bias or indebtedness to companies, researchers say.
“At least in the short term, it could help us kind of keep things moving along, the catch being that if a company sponsors my lab, then they get right of first refusal to what we invent in the lab,” said José Zevallos, MD, MPH, chair of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s never free money when it comes to industry.”
And the pharmaceutical industry is not likely to fund the basic science required to make the discoveries that ultimately lead to the successful Phase 3 trials, said Lawrence Lustig, MD, chair of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at Columbia University in New York.
“Corporate research is a critical and important part of the landscape that’s done in this country,” he said. “Often, it’s products or it’s drugs that have been developed that you want to try on humans. But who’s going to do the critical basic and translational studies to develop those drugs? That typically is not the company.
“You need to sort of plant seeds everywhere, and some of those seeds are going to germinate into beautiful trees, and some are going to die, but there’s no way to know ahead of time. The National Institutes of Health is responsible for planting those seeds. Without those seeds, we don’t get those trees that can then be culled and used for other things like drug development.”
Jonathan Overdevest, MD, PhD, a researcher at Columbia University, said that one strategy for industry funding for research that is earlier in the pipeline is to design a study that has facets of preliminary, investigative inquiry but also pursues questions that could more clearly lead to discoveries with commercialization interest.
“When there is industry funding, there’s always a bit of concern for the inherent bias in the study design and the results that are being reported,” he said. “I think that we have to be vigilant when those lines are blurred, and I think people are becoming more creative about how to make this work while maintaining scholarly integrity.”
Sad, but true.
As a former clinical assistant professor, I had an agreement to have protected time to perform research in 2008. Due to illness and a change in staffing, I lost that protected time. My clinical services were needed, and my research time was taken away. I resolved to make my teaching and clinical services my priorities. When the affected individual returned to work later in 2009, my reward was that I was given more teaching responsibilities and no time or funding for research. As I scrambled for grants and contacted industries to help support funding after the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009, I came to realize that the likelihood for funding was gone. Without prior research or publications, no funding was available to support time off from clinical work for independent research. This did not stop me from continuing my clinical work and research, once I left the world of academia. I became self-funded by dedicating a percentage of my salary to research purposes.
I believe that self-funding is the way to go. If Universities will not use their endowments to invest in research at their institutions where their review boards approve the research, then why should the janitorial staff that cleans the research buildings pay for the research with their tax dollars. If Departments of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery are dedicated to researchers, then use clinical dollars to support the research that needs to be done. Shift funds generated from ancillary personnel, such as NP’s and PA’s and Fellows, to a core research fund. Researchers need to be held accountable for the costs of their studies for there are no more blank checks.