HIV vaccine funding cuts in U.S. 'devastating'

LOS ANGELES - Scientists across the United States working to develop an HIV vaccine say they are stunned by the decision by President Donald Trump's administration to gut future research funding.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a top government research agency, on May 30 notified two leading HIV vaccine research bodies at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and Scripps Research Institute that they will not be able to apply for new funding when their current grants end in 2026.

Nearly $260 million in grants was awarded to the Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD), a broader group headed by Scripps and Duke, in 2019.

It was the third round of such funding since 2005 that has allowed researchers to work not only towards an HIV vaccine but to develop the technology that helped make the COVID vaccine so quickly.

A letter on June 9 signed by NIH staff members criticizes the Trump administration for $12 billion in funding cuts to the agency, including research on diabetes, cancer and heart diseases.

The NIH cuts come after Trump froze funds in January under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a key source of U.S. HIV funding for organizations worldwide.

Context spoke with Richard Wyatt, a senior researcher in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research Institute, to learn more about the state of research and its fate.

How much progress have prior rounds of these grants helped researchers make towards a vaccine?

We've made tremendous advances in the last decade or two in HIV vaccine development and also in technology development that's gone along with that process.

The spillover to other areas has really come from HIV vaccine [work], like the RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine and also the COVID vaccine.

So there's been great big advances and spillover to other areas of human health. Very important.

What does losing this money mean in practical terms?

It's pretty devastating to the HIV research effort overall, to the best people working on HIV vaccine. The best groups both here, Scripps, and at Duke.

And, as well, of course, on young scientists in the field. A lot of grad schools have reduced admissions. A lot of young people in both of these groups that were being trained, they may be without the ability to take their careers to the next step.

That's not to mention future protection, of course, in the U.S. and in Sub-Saharan Africa where the vaccine is really needed.

Then there's the other, this proposed 40% reduction in NIH budget overall, which would again be very, very detrimental for HIV vaccine research and any research being done within the NIH.

An anonymous NIH official told The New York Times the agency wanted to use ‘currently available approaches to eliminate’ HIV/AIDS. Is that even possible?

Well, there are drugs, which are fantastic. And that, of course, all of that comes out of NIH funding.

There are things that are very effective in general. People can live a relatively normal lifestyle now, at least in the developed world, where they can get access. Access in Sub-Saharan Africa is greatly reduced. So some people that have been taking the preexisting, what they call the antiretroviral therapy, no longer have access to these drugs.

The NIH also announced cuts to funds for those kinds of preventative treatments so, along with previous USAID cuts in Africa, what now?

So it's feared that HIV will now surge. Transmissions will go up, death, etc., down the line. It's very disturbing actually.

Will current work, ongoing clinical trials continue?

I think that depends where the trial is actually being conducted. I have a trial from one of the products we've made in our lab with the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. And so far, that's continued. It's been enrolled.

It's a Phase One, so it's 45 volunteers that have been immunized with one of our candidate vaccines, and they've had two out of the five immunisations so far.

We're just starting to get some data that looks encouraging. So I hope the trials continue. I haven't been told otherwise.