Prominent tuberculosis research program at risk of losing federal funding
Sarah Fortune’s groundbreaking tuberculosis (TB) research program, based at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is among a number of research enterprises under threat of losing federal funding as the Trump administration reviews $9 billon in federal funding to the University and affiliated hospitals.
The research project is at the top of a list of vulnerable research contracts, the Boston Globe reported on April 8.
The work is supported by a $60 million National Institutes of Health contract and has made significant progress against TB. Fortune and her collaborators around the country have “solved some of the crucial mysteries of the disease, and continues making discoveries that could prove life-saving for generations to come,” the article noted. TB kills more than a million people a year.
Fortune, John La Porte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, explained that each of the labs collaborating on tuberculosis research contributes a different sort of expertise. “This is what a moonshot looks like,” she told the Globe. “You assemble a best-in-class team and then you work collectively to try to move it forward.”
Read the Boston Globe article: ‘This looks bad.’ A Harvard infectious disease researcher is targeted in Trump’s review.
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The importance of funding infectious disease research (Harvard Chan School news)
