Posted on 08/16/2025 5:54:06 PM PDT by from occupied ga
Research funding: What's at stake
Researchers like Hopkins neuroscientist Richard Huganir are closing in on cures for devastating genetic disorders. This should be a story of hope—of what humanity can do when we invest in each other. But instead, it's become a story of uncertainty. Just as research teams are approaching success, federal funding for this work is vanishing.
Rick Huganir / Published Summer 2025 From the time I was a kid, I was fascinated by the brain. Not because I wanted to be a scientist but because I wanted to understand myself.
I didn't talk until I was 5. For a long time, I was misdiagnosed by school psychologists who referred to my "condition" as verbally delayed (although the actual term they used was a lot less kind). It was confusing, isolating. I think I became interested in how the brain works because I wanted to know why I was different. I wanted to know what makes us who we are.
In high school, I was obsessed with learning and memory. I knew early on that memory is identity. It creates us, defines our personalities, helps us make decisions, grow, and love.
So, for a high school science project, I ran an experiment. I trained goldfish to learn to swim to a target and then—in a rudimentary and definitely unrepeatable procedure— I extracted brain material from a "smart" goldfish and injected it into another fish to see if I could transfer the memory.
Spoiler: It didn't work.
But I was hooked. That experiment led me to chemistry, then neurochemistry, and eventually to decades of research studying how the brain changes chemically, structurally, and functionally when we learn. My students, postdoctoral fellows, and I have spent years identifying the molecules, genes, and proteins that are essential to learning and memory. We've worked on these molecules in cells in a dish as well as in mice and rats, animal models that have helped us expand our understanding of something so fundamental for brain function.
This basic science is often invisible, but it's the foundation of everything science eventually does to help people. It's slow. It's quiet. But it matters.
Then, in 2009 I read a paper that changed the trajectory of my career— and my life.
A gene I had been studying for years, SYNGAP1, which we showed was important in learning and memory in mice, turned up in a place I never expected: in a clinic. Doctors had found mutations in SYNGAP1 in several children that led to severe intellectual disability, autism, and epilepsy. And over time, with the publication of many additional clinical studies, it became clear that these mutations were not rare. SYNGAP1 mutations are now known to underlie 1% of all intellectual disability, affecting tens of thousands of children around the world.
I realized that something I had been studying in rats and mice for years was now key to understanding a devastating condition in children. My life's work had crossed a bridge—from the bench to the clinic.
So, we began to expand our focus. My lab launched a translational program—no longer just to understand learning and memory in theory but to cure SYNGAP1-related disorders.
I started meeting the families of the SYNGAP kids, the "SYNGAPians." The young children are beautiful. Playful. Many are diagnosed early, but as they grow, their language doesn't develop beyond a few words. Their behavior becomes harder to manage. I watch their parents—fierce, loving, exhausted. They carry an impossible weight every single day, hoping for an answer, an effective treatment.
For so long, these families had no explanation. Now they have a diagnosis—but no cure. Not yet.
But the truth is, we are close. (Translation = by close we mean no more than 20 years of fat grants coming in before we give up and change the topic) Science has moved fast. But not neurology Advances in genetic medicine now make it realistic to think about curing this disease. In the last few years, we and other labs around the world have developed tools that could correct the genetic mutation at the root of SYNGAP1 disorder. What was once science fiction is now science.
This should be a story of hope—of what humanity can do when we invest in each other.
"Labs like mine, working toward treatments that could transform thousands of lives, are forced to shut down projects, turn away talent, and walk away from cures within reach. It's not abstract. It's not academic. This is real. This is happening now. And it is crushing." Please take a moment to rail at that dastardly Trump
But instead, it's become a story of uncertainty.
Just as we are approaching success, federal funding for this work is vanishing. Under the new administration, the National Institutes of Health, which for more than 75 years has supported scientists who are pursuing research deemed to be in our national interest, is pulling back. Budgets are being slashed. Labs like mine, working toward treatments that could transform thousands of lives, are forced to shut down projects, turn away talent, and walk away from cures within reach.Many of you will realize this is a variation of the classic "Spanish Prisoner con. Just a little more...
It's not abstract. It's not academic. This is real. This is happening now. And it is crushing. pause here for you to get out your handkerchiefs and weep at the tragedy presented
I think often about those children It's for the children and their parents. I think about my younger self, the boy who didn't speak, who might've been written off. What would've happened if someone hadn't believed in his potential? instead he is more miraculous than Jesus, and smarter than Einstein
That's the power of science. It's not about facts and experiments. It's about making people's lives better.
We pay for what we value.
Pulling funding as pressure and/or punishment is fine. In doing so, one has to be selective and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This guy sound like one of the ones to defund. There are others that funding has a return in value to the taxpayer.
The person who discovers a cure for cancer, will be found floating face down in the East river the next day.
The Medical Industrial complex….
There are plenty of very wealthy people that can fund research aside from the fact that AI will be much better at it very soon!! After Covid and the absolute LIES coming from scientists and pharmaceutical companies SCREW THEM and their fraudulent research!!!
I noticed that too - just a correlation to a gene and a third rate appeal to emotion to squeeze more taxpayer pelf.
This article is the squeal of a hog getting cut off from the trough
Great idea. I wonder how he’d do with a go fund me.
He misses the point. Research is certainly making HIS life better, but is the government’s taking taxpayer money to fund endless navel gazing “research” making THEIR lives better. I think not
“…and walk away from cures within reach…”
When people say words that don’t really mean anything.
The goal of a grant is to acquire the next one for more money.
You may find something on Monday, but not report it till asked.Then you just found it. Get it?
Private sector demands you work for your money.
Public sector has you working towards xa goal, and maintains your name on the list of qualified recurring grants.
I love “within reach”. Fusion power has been “within reach” for the last 50-60 years. Again it’s the Spanish Prisoner con. Just a little more money and the prisoner will be free.
Kinda funny that he doesn’t mention how much was cut in dollars.
If government funds the research, anything derived from that research should be public property. If it finds a cure, the cure should be free to all taxpayers, or at least back out the R&D markup.
RC
Clear sociopath masquerading as a medical do-gooder.
“Just as research teams are approaching success”
IF true, then private investment would leap at the opportunities to cash in ... otherwise, then NOT true ...
I read the article and all it did was whine.
So, was the funding cut due to the overhead charged by the University exceeding federal guidelines? Was the problem the federal debt limit and not to keep expanding the NIH budget?
I remember going back to DC to lobby Congress that they were neglecting research in physical science, because funding of NIS was not going up like NIH. I was told the Congressional earmarks went to NIH because the medical condition groups helped reelect Congressmen who gave federal money generously.
Well the federal earmark/budget gravy train is pretty much over.
Thinks he can use the word science to awe the rubes in fly over country. Oh well if it's science then give him all the money he wants.
"Anthropogenic Climate change" is also being called science and it's nothing but a giant scam. I wonder how much EV car companies contributed to Democrats over the last 15 years and how much taxpayer loot they got back in return
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