USA: Center for Solutions for ME/CFS - news and updates from Columbia University's NIH funded center

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https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/19...c-fatigue-syndrome-columbia-program-shutdown/

ME/CFS research program shuts down at Columbia after Trump cuts

Not good
https://twitter.com/user/status/1902415822494023878


NEW: Cuts to Columbia University funding have shuttered a prominent research center into ME/CFS, a debilitating condition with no FDA approved treatments. It's a gut punch to a community that for years has been frustrated by a lack of funding. Developing..

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/dei-columbia-funding-cuts/682091/

The DEI Catch-22

Columbia researchers believe their grants are being cut because of diversity components that were imposed by the federal government.
By Rose Horowitch

When the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million worth of grants to and contracts with Columbia University, ostensibly to punish the university for its handling of anti-Semitism amid pro-Palestinian campus protests, one important detail went unspecified: what type of funding, exactly, would be getting cut. In the weeks since, researchers at the university have found themselves moonlighting as detectives, trying to understand why some of them saw their life’s work upended while others were spared.

They believe they have found a pattern. As far as they can tell, nearly all of the canceled grants seem to have made some mention of diversity, equity, inclusion, or other disfavored topics, several med-school researchers told me.

Making the cuts even more maddening is the fact that, at least until a few months ago, the federal government required researchers to include plans to “enhance diversity” in many grant applications. And under a policy first implemented during the George H. W. Bush administration, the National Institutes of Health long offered supplemental funding for grants that employed someone from an underrepresented minority group. Now the same factors that helped researchers get their grants approved may have become liabilities. “You can imagine how it feels to be terminated for following the government guidelines,” Domenico Accili, an endocrinology professor, told me.

More at link - requires free trial sign up https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/dei-columbia-funding-cuts/682091/

 

CBS News: Columbia University faces federal deadline to make changes or lose $400 million in funds

Dr. Ian Lipkin is the director of Columbia University's Center for Solutions for ME/CFS, where he studies the debilitating chronic illness affecting about 3 million Americans.

"We really felt as though we were on the cusp of being able to come up with solutions for these people," Lipkin said.

That was until earlier this month, when Lipkin says the federal government pulled millions of dollars in grants for their research as part of the $400 million that the Trump administration told Columbia it was canceling.

"I've devoted my whole life to this. I've never encountered anything like this," Lipkin said.

He added, "The work has been terminated just shy of being able to come up with proposals for clinical trials that might improve their quality of life."

Lipkin says he's now unsure what the future holds.

"I don't really have any sense of what the university could do. And I don't know what the Trump administration is going to do. All I know is we have to somehow persevere," he said.

 

From Isabella Cueto's article in STAT+ - hope the genetics work at Edinburgh is not going to be affected by this:

 

Because they hate all science and Columbia in particular, and every researcher at Columbia is part of the deep state. I wouldn't necessarily look any deeper than that. I doubt there is particular animus against people with ME or anything like that. Why cut it? Because they can.

 

I hadn't even considered that Edinburgh might be affected! DecodeME and LOCOME are UK funded, so this must be something else?

Maybe they were planning on working with Edinburgh on a US LC or ME GWAS? I know Ponting recommended it in his research roadmap presentation a couple of years back.

Or maybe Sequence had secured some NIH funding?

Who is to say. Just speculating really. This is absolutely infuriating. Edinburgh aside, from what Lipkin said they were pretty close to designing clinical drug trials based on their research...

This is not the place to post about politics but the fact that the Trump administration is just bulldozing scientific projects like this without a care for anything is terrifying.

 

Existing work isn't, the planned project where Columbia as lead partner was the recipient of NIH funding is.

Exactly this.

Not as far as I'm aware. In any case, SequenceME does not need involvement of Columbia.

 

They're cutting cancer research and estimates of the impacts of cutting foreign aid programs range in the several million more deaths, and likely many more disabled, per year. This will kill millions per year.

We're just collateral damage in the destruction of the US' science infrastructure. Anything that affects us isn't personal or directed, and shouldn't be looked at with any expectation of rational sense or even a concept of a plan besides destruction for the sake of destruction.

 

Not arguing with Dave30th's answer but specifically - the grant application will have referenced diversity issues as a matter of course - it was a requirement ! The slash and burn approach is simply using basic key word searches and anything with an offending word is marked for closure/cut/deletion. There's a stark example from how the same approach has worked at the DoD: https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/21/bea-arthur-golden-girls-dei-department-of-defense/

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/columbia-university-trump-demands-funding-rcna197261

Columbia University agrees to Trump demands in effort to restore federal funding
The Trump administration — which canceled $400M in grants — had ordered the school to implement a mask ban, discipline protesters, reform admissions and more.

 

I didn't get a paywall. (Edited to add that I later went back and got a paywall.) I posted the start and end of a long article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/trump-columbia-university-400-million.html

Decades Ago, Columbia Refused to Pay Trump $400 Million. Note That Number.
A quarter century ago, the university was looking to expand. It considered, and rejected, property owned by Donald Trump. He did not forget it.

 

ABC 7 News: 'Columbia University agrees to Trump administration demands to restore funding'

However, it's not clear whether these steps will help restore $400 millions in funding the the government held back earlier this month. Negotiations had been ongoing ahead of the Friday deadline after the revocation of the money halted things like campus research.

Dr. Ian Lipkin was frustrated that his labs were sitting silent after the millions of dollars in funding were pulled by the federal government.

He heads up Columbia University's Center for Solutions for ME/CFS -- a chronic and debilitating disease. The patients are continuously incapacitated. Very few of them recover and there are no established laboratory diagnostic tests, nor are there any established treatments.

It all left researchers like Dr. Lipkin wondering what was next for his life's work and what to tell patients.

"I've been hearing from patients over the past few days, you know, what does this mean for me? You promised me that you were going to try to get to the bottom of this, and now, I don't know," Lipkin said.

What he does know is that his patients are unintended victims of a battle between the U.S. president and a private university.

 

Didn't see the source for this, from today, but I've seen others confirm. Caving to a bully never works. It only encourages them.

 

Fierce Biotech: 'It's just ugly': Federal funding cuts to Columbia University leave chronic fatigue research in limbo'

“The field of ME/CFS is ripe for clinical trials,” Lipkin, who directs the center...“These cuts have brought our work to a dead halt.”

 

Did Lipkin actually have any suggested drugs to trial? I don’t think so.

 

From the report: “Earlier this month, Ian Lipkin, M.D., and his team at Columbia University submitted a paper for publication that suggests certain approved drugs could possibly be repurposed…”

What those are, I’m not sure.

 

He mentioned planned drug trials in another interview a few days ago too.

 

OK but I meant did he mention a specific drug name? I’ve never heard him suggest a specific drug.

 

I remember suggesting to Lipkin that he tried anti-IL-17 but he dismissed it as laking evidence.
I think it might be worth a go in fact. Or another thing ...