Jack Glaser with a picture of his father and MBF Bioscience co-founder Edmund Glaser. Photo courtesy of MBF BioscienceThis story by Jason Starr was first published in the Williston Observer on March 20.Next to UVM, the second largest recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in Vermont is a Williston business on Allen Brook Lane called MBF Bioscience.The company was awarded a nearly $1 million grant this fiscal year and has two applications pending. So co-founder Jack Glaser (readers may recognize Glaser from his pending subdivision application of the “Glaser parcel” on Mountain View Road) is closely watching the Trump administration’s push to reduce grant allowances by capping administrative costs — a policy that has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.MBF Bioscience develops products for use in biomedical research. Not only does it receive NIH grants for research and development, it also sells products to researchers whose work is funded by the NIH.“It’s a huge part of our business,” Glaser said of NIH grant funding.About three weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, the NIH released a memo justifying the change, arguing that too much of the organization’s grant awards are used on “indirect costs“ such as building operations, equipment and administrative functions like accounting. It announced a cap on those costs at 15 percent of any new or existing grant award, effective as of the Feb. 7 memo date.“NIH spent more than $35 billion in Fiscal Year 2023 on almost 50,000 competitive grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools and other research institutions across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Of this funding, approximately $26 billion went to direct costs for research, while $9 billion was allocated to overhead through NIH’s indirect cost rate,” the memo states.The agency reports an average indirect cost rate on its grants of about 27 percent, while noting that some private non-profit foundation grants for scientific research don’t fund indirect costs, and others cap indirect costs between 10-15 percent.Due to the court-ordered injunction blocking the policy change, Glaser expects to receive the full $1 million recently approved, but two pending applications are stalled. That’s because the NIH has managed to implement a de facto funding freeze by postponing public meetings to review new grant awards, Glaser said.“Their response (to the judge’s order) was, ‘oh, we’ll just not let the NIH meet to decide who’s going to get funding,’” said Glaser. “So there is essentially a block right now. It’s a backdoor block that the Trump administration did by prohibiting the NIH from using a system for announcing public meetings.”MBF Bioscience employs about 35 people out of its Williston office, and also has offices in Virginia, San Diego, the Netherlands and Japan. Glaser hopes its international business and sales into private pharmaceutical and biotech companies will be unaffected by what happens with the NIH. But if the courts ultimately allow the grant reductions that the Trump administration is seeking, it would be a significant hit to the way the company has done business over the course of its nearly 40-year history.“It’s not like everything is contingent on NIH funding, but the way we’ve been operating and doing business for years is definitely highly dependent on getting NIH funding to do new product development,” Glaser said.While he called this the most challenging time in his business career, he said he’s more concerned about the ecosystem of U.S. scientific research. A blog post on the company website (mbfbioscience.com) explains: “Scientific progress does not happen overnight. It is the result of sustained funding, collaboration, and commitment. Drastic budget reductions will stall projects, disrupt labs, and drive talented researchers — especially early-career scientists — out of the field. The ripple effect will be devastating, slowing the development of new treatments, vaccines, and technologies that millions rely on.”Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark echoed that sentiment when she announced the lawsuit, filed with fellow Democrat attorneys general in 21 other states.“Medical research funding by NIH grants has led to innumerable scientific breakthroughs, including the discovery of treatment for cancers of all types, the first sequencing of DNA and the development of the MRI. Additionally, dozens of NIH-supported scientists have earned Nobel Prizes for their groundbreaking scientific work,” a news release from her office announcing the lawsuit states.A decline in NIH funding jeopardizes about $120 million in Vermont, her office estimates.The NIH argues that the new policy is aimed at streamlining the country’s bioscientific research.“The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” its Feb. 7 memo states. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.” Read the story on VTDigger here: Williston bioscience business bristles as research grants threatened. ...read more read less