By Cadence Russell, editor-in-chief
In the last month and a half, scientific funding has been thrown into a world of uncertainty as funding cuts have been ordered by the Trump administration. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the largest public funder of biomedical research globally, has been one of the government-funded agencies hit the hardest. Funding for research at the NIH has dropped by about $3 billion when compared to last year, resulting in studies canceled and jobs lost. Daemen has not been excluded from such impacts.
Senior Christie Kurdziel, a biology/cytotechnology major, had her senior research work upended with the sudden freezing of the grant that was funding it.
“I was working on adipose tissue migration and what the implications and benefits that [it] means for deep tissue pressure injuries,” Kurdziel said.
Deep tissue pressure injuries (DTPIs) are serious pressure injuries that can progress rapidly, lead to skin loss and infection, and are hard to identify, often being mistaken for a bruise.
“I think it was about a week and a half after all of the news came out about NIH funding being cut,” Kurdziel said, referring to when she first heard about their grant. “I would say that it kind of hit us later than everywhere else.”
Kurdziel works with Dr. Laura Edsberg, professor of biology. She analyzes histology slides, essentially thin sections of tissue and cells, to look for markers in the adipose tissue (fat tissue) that would signal a DTPI. For Kurdziel, her research is a part of the capstone requirement in the natural sciences department, which she has been working on over the past two years.
Scientific grants, especially from agencies like the NIH, are science’s lifeline. NIH’s $48 billion budget is nearly all invested in medical research, leading to critical breakthroughs such as the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, the Human Genome Project, and gene editing techniques, including CRISPR.
“I think part of it was budget for stains, because they’re really expensive, and then also, I would have been getting paid,” Kurdziel said.
Scientific grants commonly cover not just materials needed for studies to be conducted, but they often cover researchers’ salaries. For Kurdziel, the money would have been put towards graduate school, as she is pursuing her M.S. in cytotechnology through the 4+1 program, in partnership with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The grant associated with Kurdziel’s research has now been granted a review, said someone with an understanding of the process, but didn’t wish to be named publicly. Grant reviews had been stopped in the NIH due to a communication freeze ordered by the Trump administration. The freeze stopped any grant application reviews from being held, leaving many researchers, such as Kurdzeil and her advisor, Dr. Edsberg, in limbo. The freeze has since been lifted partially, but grant allotments, including indirect costs, as well as staff at the NIH, continued to be slashed.
“It’s kind of in the nebulous space,” Kurdziel said. “I have to make a decision whether or not I’m willing to do this work for free, or I’m willing, or I want them to submit another grant approval.”
“Adipose tissue is one of the most under-studied tissue types in the human body,” Kurdziel said. “I don’t think the message we should be sending young women is, Oh, get rid of it. It could be beneficial and useful, and I think it’s important in that sense of like, no, don’t get rid of something, because we literally don’t have any research that says that it’s not beneficial.”