联邦资金是美国科学发现的命脉。现在这些钱从哪里来？
【中美创新时报2025 年 4 月 29 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）面对白宫的削减，实验室正在寻求基金会、行业，甚至是其所在大学的资助，以支持突破性的研究。《波士顿环球报》记者阿曼达·戈基乔纳森·萨尔兹曼和罗伯特·韦斯曼对此作了下述报道。
随着特朗普政府撤回对哈佛大学和其他新英格兰地区机构的联邦研究资金，推动美国医学进步的资金喷泉可能正在 枯竭，而这些机构一直是可靠的发现和创新引擎。
然而，随着实验室争相寻找其他资金来源——从基金会、行业甚至大学主办方——短期内，这些参与者几乎不可能填补白宫撤销所造成的资金缺口。
哈佛大学附属贝斯以色列女执事医疗中心病毒学和疫苗研究中心主任丹·巴鲁奇博士表示：“联邦政府对包括生物医学研究在内的研究的投入规模，是美国在全球研究领域占据主导地位的原因。”巴鲁奇的实验室曾参与研发新冠疫苗。“如果联邦政府停止支持研究，美国将失去其全球主导地位。”
美国国立卫生研究院、美国国家科学基金会和其他联邦机构的预算削减引发了 学术界的强烈反对 ，也引发了人们对美国以政府为中心的生物医学研究资助模式的未来进行一些冷静的反思。这种模式推动了一系列突破，从磁共振成像和靶向癌症治疗，到人类基因组图谱绘制，再到帮助战胜新冠疫情的疫苗。
大学对联邦资金的依赖使其很容易受到特朗普总统和其他民选官员的削减，他们指责大学推行他们反对的举措，例如多元化和LGBTQ健康问题。本月早些时候，特朗普政府表示，将冻结对哈佛大学22亿美元的多年期拨款，原因是有人指控该校对反犹太主义反应不足。此外，政府还在审查联邦政府对哈佛大学及其附属机构近90亿美元的多年期拨款承诺。
哈佛大学位于波士顿的教学医院是去年美国国立卫生研究院资助的最大接受者之一，其中麻省总医院获得超过 6.55 亿美元的资助，布莱根妇女医院获得超过 3.88 亿美元的资助。
哈佛大学上周一起诉特朗普政府，称其利用削减研究经费作为筹码，控制哈佛的学术事务以及招生、招聘和多元化实践，这是对联邦权力的违宪滥用。
在等待法院裁决的同时，实验室正在重新评估其资金来源。除了联邦拨款外，他们的研究通常还得到基金会和其他资助机构的资助。但实验室主任认为这些资金是次要的。哈佛医学院的一位科学家将盖茨基金会（世界上最大的私人捐赠者之一）的资金描述为“圣代冰淇淋”上的“糖屑”，而圣代冰淇淋主要由公共资金构成。
随着白宫继续针对大学和研究项目，新英格兰地区和全国的研究人员正在寻找维持或多样化资金来源的方法。
雅各布·博罗多夫斯基（Jacob Borodovsky ）是达特茅斯盖泽尔医学院的流行病学家和研究员，近年来获得了数百万美元的联邦拨款，用于研究大麻合法化、阿片类药物泛滥和酒精滥用。鉴于联邦资金的不确定性，他希望寻求其他支持，但怀疑自己能否成功。
“资助这类研究的私人机构并不多，”博罗多夫斯基说道，并指出开展公共卫生研究的经济动机很少。“实际上，唯一愿意资助我这类工作的机构是政府，因为他们肩负着公共卫生的职责。”
哈佛商学院执行研究员、医疗器械巨头美敦力公司前首席执行官比尔乔治表示，随着联邦机构的退出，生物制药公司、私募股权投资者、富有的慈善家，甚至马萨诸塞州政府可能不得不设立新的资金池来支持早期研究。
他说：“私人投资者可以也应该站出来”保护科研事业。但他表示，许多投资者不愿将资金投入到需要十多年才能实现商业化的研究项目中。
自第二次世界大战以来，资助美国研究的体系不仅吸引了美国的创新者，还吸引了国际学生、研究人员和那些本国在尖端科学上投入较少资源的科学家。
该系统由富兰克林·罗斯福总统的科学顾问万尼瓦尔·布什发起，大学将获得数十亿美元的联邦资金，用于开展布什所谓的能源、国防和医学等领域的“基础研究”。然后，大学将研究成果授权给开发疗法、医疗技术和其他商业产品的公司。
该系统源于二战及随后的冷战期间研发先进武器的迫切需求。此后，它逐渐发展成为和平时期生物医学创新的领先引擎。
虽然美国的这一体系常被誉为研究的黄金标准，但它也因计算生物学家C. Brandon Ogbunu所说的“帝国科学”而受到批评——偏向于人类基因组计划等备受瞩目的项目。随着越来越多的资金流向大型项目，留给那些可能在罕见遗传疾病等领域带来巨大回报的小规模探索性项目的资金却越来越少。
康涅狄格州耶鲁大学生态学和进化生物学助理教授奥格布努表示，对政府慷慨的依赖使得美国大学特别容易受到特朗普政府削减和威胁的影响。
他说，新一代研究人员可能必须以“减少危害模式”进行科学研究，利用更少的政府资金和资源，但共享更多数据并分散研究任务。他列举了瑞士和其他国家的一些企业，他们已经在按照这种思路重新思考研究实践。
“美国高等教育领域太多的研究都依赖于NIH的巨额定期资助，”奥格布努说道。“现在的情况具有破坏性和颠覆性。但在这样的时刻，我们可以反思这个存在严重缺陷的体系。我们未来建设的体系不能像过去那样。”
很少有人认为回到二战前的时代是可行的，那时的研究是由洛克菲勒基金会等私人非营利组织和贝尔实验室等行业研究机构资助和进行的。虽然如今生物制药公司也投资于研发，但它们的大部分资金都流向了后期候选药物和其他可以快速商业化盈利的项目，而不是基础研究。
“很难想象我们目前的研究结构能够承受NIH的大幅削减，”奥格布努说。“资金减少，实验室规模就会缩小。”
华盛顿特区战略与国际研究中心高级副总裁兼主任 J. Stephen Morrison 表示，美国国立卫生研究院和其他美国机构的资助规模远远超过其他国家
根据美国国家科学委员会（National Science Board）2024年的报告，美国政府2021年的国内科研总支出为8060亿美元，其次是中国（6680亿美元）、日本（1770亿美元）、德国（1540亿美元）和韩国（1200亿美元）。报告称，英国在2021年的科研支出约为980亿美元，而法国为772亿美元。
莫里森说：“我们拥有这些庞大的（美国）大学结构，主要的研究型大学与 NIH 紧密相连。”
他表示，美国体系的影响力早已远远超出了美国国界，国际临床试验和研究机构都接受了美国的资助。
莫里森表示，基金会现在或许能够介入更多，欧洲国家或加拿大可能会发挥更大的作用。
然而他表示，“没有任何快速简便的方法可以取代”美国政府的资助。
莫里森表示，近年来，随着生物技术成为首要战略目标，中国大幅增加了研发支出。中国模式高度集中，以国家安全为中心，军民融合，不利于建立全球伙伴关系。
他说：“这使得非中国学者在这些环境中开展工作变得越来越困难。”
他表示，尽管欧盟的资助模式借鉴了政府资金，但其特点是投资水平较低、研究项目周期较短、官僚主义程度较高。不过，鉴于目前美国科研领域的动荡，他预计欧洲将成功招募更多国际科学家。
与此同时，美国实验室可能必须适应特朗普时代带来的新现实冲击和不稳定。
弗朗西斯卡·博杜安 (Francesca Beaudoin ) 是一位临床流行病学家，也是布朗大学公共卫生学院的学术院长，多年来一直获得联邦政府以及基金会和工业界的资助。
她的一些研究关注的是仿制阿片类药物的最有效剂量。她说，如果没有联邦政府的资助，“很难想象我们能够完成这项工作。”
博杜安表示，由于这些药物已经上市，这样的项目不太可能获得行业资助。但她表示，这项研究的成果或许能帮助数百万饱受阿片类药物成瘾之苦的美国人。
“我认为政府资助的医学研究之所以如此重要，是因为它是由美国人民的健康优先事项驱动的，”她说。“我从未见过私营实体主导所有医学研究和创新的情况。我想我们也不希望出现这种情况。”
题图：研究助理李振峰在巴鲁奇实验室准备测试，2020 年，研究人员在贝斯以色列女执事医疗中心病毒学和疫苗研究中心的巴鲁奇实验室研发新冠疫苗。 图片来源：Craig F. Walker/《环球报》员工/文件
附原英文报道：
Federal funds were the lifeblood of US scientific discovery. Where will the money come from now?
Facing White House cuts, labs are looking to foundations, industry, and even their university hosts to bankroll groundbreaking research
By Amanda Gokee, Jonathan Saltzman and Robert Weisman Globe Staff,Updated April 28, 2025
Research assistant Zhenfeng Li prepared a test in the Barouch Laboratory, where researchers worked to develop a COVID-19 vaccine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Center for Virology and Vaccine Research in 2020.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff/file
The funding geyser that propelled US medical advances for much of the past century may be drying up as the Trump administration pulls back federal research money from Harvard University and other New England institutions that have been reliable engines of discovery and innovation.
Yet as labs scramble for alternative funding sources — from foundations, industry, even their university hosts — there’s little hope, in the short term, that those players can fill the gaps resulting from White House rollbacks.
“The extent of the federal investment in research, including biomedical research, is the reason the U.S. has been dominant in research worldwide,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, head of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose lab helped develop a COVID-19 vaccine. “If the federal government stops supporting research, the U.S. will lose its global dominance.”
Budget cuts from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other federal agencies have prompted pushback from the academic community but also some sober reflections on the future of the nation’s government-centered model for bankrolling biomedical research. That model has fueled breakthroughs, from magnetic resonance imaging and targeted cancer therapies, to mapping the human genome to the vaccines that helped vanquish the COVID pandemic.
Universities’ reliance on federal funds has left them vulnerable to cutbacks by President Trump and other elected officials who accuse them of pursuing initiatives they object to, such as diversity and LGBTQ health issues. Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard over allegations that the university has responded inadequately to antisemitism. It’s also reviewing nearly $9 billion in multiyear federal funding commitments to Harvard and its affiliates.
Harvard’s teaching hospitals in Boston were among the nation’s largest recipients of NIH grants last year, with Massachusetts General Hospital drawing more than $655 million and Brigham and Women’s Hospital more than $388 million.
Harvard sued the Trump administration last Monday, arguing it was deploying research funding cuts as leverage to exert control over Harvard’s academic affairs, as well as its admissions, hiring, and diversity practices, representing an unconstitutional abuse of federal power.
While waiting for the courts to weigh in, labs are reassessing their funding sources. In addition to federal grants, their research is often supported by grants from foundations and other funders. But lab directors see such funding as secondary. One scientist at Harvard Medical School described money from the Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest private donors, as “sprinkles” on top of an “ice cream sundae” made up largely of public funding.
Researchers across New England and nationally are searching for ways to maintain or diversify their funding sources as the White House continues to target universities and research programs.
Jacob Borodovsky, an epidemiologist and researcher at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, has received millions of dollars in federal grants in recent years to study cannabis legalization, the opioid epidemic, and alcohol use. Given the uncertainty around federal funding, he’d like to find alternative support but doubts he can.
“There’s not many private institutions that fund that kind of research,” Borodovsky said, noting there’s little economic incentive to conduct public health research. “Really, the only institution that would fund my kind of work is the government because they have a public health mandate.”
Harvard Business School Executive Fellow Bill George, the former chief executive of medical device giant Medtronic, said biopharma companies, private equity investors, wealthy philanthropists, and even Massachusetts’ state government may have to set up new funding pools to back early-stage research as the federal agencies back off.
“Private investors can and should step up” to protect the research enterprise, he said. But, he said, many are reluctant to put money into research that takes more than a decade to commercialize.
The system that’s bankrolled US research since World War II has attracted not only American innovators but international students, researchers, and scientists whose own countries devote fewer resources to cutting-edge science.
Under this system, launched by President Franklin Roosevelt’s science advisor Vannevar Bush, universities receive billions of federal dollars to conduct what Bush called “basic research” in areas such as energy, defense, and medicine. They then license their discoveries to companies that develop therapies, medical technology, and other commercial products.
The system grew out of an urgency to develop advanced weapons during World War II and the Cold War that followed. It’s since evolved into the leading peacetime generator of biomedical innovation.
While this US system is often described as the gold standard of research, it’s also been criticized for what computational biologist C. Brandon Ogbunu terms “empire science” — a bias toward high-profile initiatives such as the Human Genome Project. As more money flows to the big programs, less remains for small-scale exploratory ventures that could have a big payoff in areas such as rare genetic disorders.
Dependence on government largesse has made US universities uniquely vulnerable to the Trump administration’s cuts and threats, said Ogbunu, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University in Connecticut.
He said a new generation of researchers may have to pursue science in a “harm reduction mode,” making do with less government funding and fewer resources but sharing more data and decentralizing research tasks. He cited ventures in Switzerland and other countries that are already rethinking research practices along these lines.
“Too much of American research in higher education is fused to large and regular funding from NIH,” Ogbunu said. “What’s happening now is disruptive and destructive. But at moments like this, we can reflect on a system that’s deeply flawed. What we build in the future can’t look like what we had.”
Few think a return to the pre-World War II era, when research was funded and conducted by private nonprofits such as the Rockefeller Foundation and industry research groups like Bell Labs, is viable. While biopharma companies invest in research and development today, much of their money is directed toward late-stage drug candidates and other projects that can be quickly commercialized for profit, not basic research.
“It’s very hard to imagine our research structure as it stands today surviving serious NIH cuts,” Ogbunu said. “With less funding, labs will shrink.”
The sheer scale of funding from NIH and other US agencies dwarfs that of other countries, according to J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president and director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
According to a 2024 report from the National Science Board, the US government logged $806 billion in gross domestic spending for research in 2021, followed by China ($668 billion), Japan ($177 billion), Germany ($154 billion), and South Korea ($120 billion). The United Kingdom spent about $98 billion, while France spent $77.2 billion in 2021, the report said.
“We’ve got these massive [US] university structures, major research universities that are bound at the hip with NIH,” said Morrison.
And the reach of the US system has long extended well beyond America’s borders, he said, with international clinical trials and research institutes receiving US funding.
Foundations may be able to step in more now, Morrison said, and there could be a bigger role for European nations or Canada.
Yet “there’s no quick and easy replacement” for US government funding, he said.
In recent years, China has dramatically increased its research spending, as biotechnology has become a top strategic goal, Morrison said. The Chinese model is highly centralized, with a national security focus and a civil-military fusion that frowns on global partnerships.
“It makes it increasingly difficult for non-Chinese scholars to operate in those environments,” he said.
While the funding model in the European Union draws from government funding, he said it is characterized by lower levels of investment, shorter timelines for research projects, and a greater degree of bureaucracy. Still, given the current turbulence in US research, he expects Europe to successfully recruit more international scientists.
American labs, meanwhile, may have to adjust to the shocks and instability that’s become their new reality in the Trump era.
Francesca Beaudoin, a clinical epidemiologist and academic dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, has received federal funding for years, as well as money from foundations and industry.
Some of her research looks at the most effective doses of generic opioid medications. Without federal funding, she said, “it’s hard to imagine that we would be able to complete it.”
Such a project would be an unlikely candidate for industry funding, Beaudoin said, since the medications are already available. But the research findings, she said, could help millions of Americans suffering from opioid addiction.
“What I think is so important about the medical research that the government funds is that it is driven by the health priorities of the American people,” she said. “I don’t ever see a place where private entities are driving all of the medical research and innovation. I don’t think we would want that either.”
