NIH Scientists Find a Type of HPV Can Cause Skin Cancer
A type of human papillomavirus (HPV) that is commonly found on the skin can cause skin cancer, the scientists said in a report published by The New England Journal of Medicine.
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Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Boston Globe
‘Great news but a weird twist.' After the NIH moved to restore hundreds of grants, researchers remain in limbo.
Advertisement In New England, 63 of those grants, worth $126 million, are set to be restored, according to a Globe analysis based on the The grants were restored as the result of a lawsuit filed by the American Public Health Association and 16 state attorneys general arguing that the NIH improperly ended funding tied to topics like gender identity, health disparities, vaccine hesitancy, and DEI efforts. The judge in the case ruled in June that the terminations were 'illegal and void' and ordered the government to immediately make the funds available. The Trump administration has appealed the decision. Advertisement The grants are a fraction of the more than $3.1 billion in funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services that the Trump administration has canceled across New England. At a status hearing on the case Monday, attorneys representing the public health association said that more than 50 of its roughly 300 affected research grants across the country have not been reinstated, and that the NIH has not provided a timeline for when all grants will be restored. Researchers face other obstacles as well. At Harvard, virtually all federal funding remains frozen as part of the administration's broader assault on the university. Others face reduced staffing, due to layoffs, and shortened deadlines to complete their research. And funding at the federal level remains subject to sudden reversals, as shown Tuesday night when the White House In a statement Thursday, the NIH told the Globe it 'has been working to reinstate grants to comply with the court's order.' Scott Delaney, a Harvard scientist and co-creator of Grant Watch, said many researchers remain wary despite the win because of further appeals and reviews. 'Every indication is that NIH will continue to cut research on trans health and on DEI. They still remain hostile to broad bodies of research, and they continue to ask researchers to rewrite their grants to avoid certain topics,' said Delaney, who lost his own NIH funding and received a But many are pressing ahead despite the obstacles and hoping for the best. Advertisement Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, learned this month that her funding would be restored. She said that despite feeling vindicated by US District Court Judge William G. Young's ruling, she cannot access the funds due to the federal freeze on funds to Harvard. Since 2019, Krieger and her team have been working to measure the impact of six types of discrimination — including racism, sexism, and ageism — on health. The researchers enrolled 699 patients who completed two study questionnaires online and at three Boston community health centers — including Fenway Health, Mattapan Community Health Center, and Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center in Dorchester — to test how discrimination contributes to psychological distress and sleep disorders. 'We can resume the work because we had completed all data collection and we were in the phase of data analysis and manuscript preparation,' Krieger said. 'Whether or not the funding ever truly gets reinstated for my grant — and I would like that it is — it's important, given the complexities, to make sure these things go from a court order to reality.' At Tufts, the school lost and then suddenly regained a pipeline for young talent, though several young scientists lost out in the process. The university hosts one of just 22 NIH-sponsored programs in the country that trains a diverse group of postdoctoral scholars in both research and teaching. The program, called the Institutional Research Career and Academic Development Award, or IRACDA, focuses on underrepresented groups. 'We were ramping up for another five years after earning highly competitive funding last fall,' said Mitch McVey, program director and professor of biology at Tufts. 'Then the new administration came in, and everything changed.' Advertisement When the NIH terminated funding, four incoming applicants had their offers rescinded just one day after receiving them. Marissa Maroni, 28, celebrated the news with her husband and prepared to move back to her home state. 'It felt like the right next step, personally and professionally,' said Maroni, who is finishing her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. 'But just a day later, I got an email saying the program was canceled. It was incredibly disheartening.' The loss also affects Bunker Hill Community College, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Suffolk University, where IRACDA scholars like Maroni were slated to teach next year. McVey said Tufts might extend the offers again to the four applicants but, 'We're trying to balance the risk involved here, which would be that if the government wins the appeal, the funding will likely be terminated again. We don't want to put the scholars in a position where their job security is always in jeopardy, so we're trying to figure out how to best navigate this situation. It's not easy.' At Yale, nine NIH grants that were terminated are in the process of reinstatement. Four of those belong to John Pachankis, a Yale School of Public Health professor who has spent the past 20 years investigating why people in the LGBTQ+ community are at higher risk for depression, anxiety, and suicide. The sudden March terminations not only disrupted years of research but also halted the rollout of promising mental health interventions. One of Pachankis's halted trials aimed to train front-line mental health providers working at 90 LGBTQ+ community centers across 35 states in cognitive-behavioral therapy to treat depression, anxiety, and substance use. Advertisement 'Right before the funding termination, we learned that our trained mental health providers had started delivering our cognitive-behavioral therapy to over 4,000 LGBT people in just four months,' he said. The funding cut prevented them from studying the longer-term impact of the therapy and ways to sustain it in local communities. Restarting the work has been slow and resource-intensive, he said. It requires updating ethics approvals, reconvening data safety review boards, updating clinical trials registries, drafting now-overdue progress reports, and restarting trials enrollment while no longer having sufficient staff to do this work. 'The research infrastructure took years to build, was collapsed in a day, and will take months if not longer to rebuild,' Pachankis said. 'My confidence in future federal funding for this research remains shaken, but my team's commitment to asking and answering important scientific questions isn't going away.' Meanwhile, at Brown, Moitra is figuring out how to move forward with his research. Between 2022 and early 2024, he and his team recruited 240 LGBTQ+ participants, offering two counseling sessions to study the mental health impacts from the pandemic. After funding was pulled, Moitra said, they lost 40 participants' worth of data that had timed out after those participants received just one counseling session. Now that the grant has been reinstated, Moitra's team is left racing against the clock as the deadline for the funding to be used remains Aug. 31. The researchers are applying for a no-cost extension to allow them to complete the work without requesting additional funds. 'After five-plus months of uncertainty, we were moving on,' Moitra said. 'It's hard to scramble it all back together.' Advertisement Sarah Rahal can be reached at
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Pharma interest can plug NIH funding gap: Illumina CEO
Genetic sequencing company Illumina (ILMN) has had a rough few years. It has battled activist investors, faced off with the Federal Trade Commission, and, most recently, agreed to a $9.8 million settlement with the Department of Justice over a cybersecurity breach. To add to the pile: sanctions in China and the Trump administration cutting National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, which the company relies heavily on for clinical research. The numbers don't lie. The stock is down more than 21% in the past year and sank more than 11% in after-hours trading Thursday after the company reported an earnings miss for the second quarter. The company reported $1.06 billion in revenues compared to expected revenues of $1.05 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.19 compared to estimates of $1.01. But CEO Jacob Thaysen told Yahoo Finance he remains positive about the company's near-term growth. Why? Because, in part, pharmaceutical companies can provide a new market. "Now, we're shifting from small things to really big programs. Some of the things making up for the reduction from the NIH is kind of indirect, but pharma is getting more interest in these big programs," he said, noting that 15% of the company is exposed to government research funding. "It's not only about sequencing itself, but really using massive amounts of data ... to really identify new drug targets and understand a disease," Thaysen said. The idea to use patient data to help the pharmaceutical world was also identified by 23andMe, which recently came out of bankruptcy through a nonprofit led by founder Anne Wojcicki. Thaysen said that unlike 23andMe, which he has worked with, his company is not going to pursue drug development on its own. "We have a lot of pharma companies that are very excited to work with us," he said. In addition to genetic testing of patient samples, the company is looking at growing in the preventative side of care with cancer screenings. The oncology business, Thaysen said, will have healthy growth over the next 10 or so years. China China banned importations of the San Diego-based company's sequencing machines earlier this year as part of its retaliatory actions to Trump's tariff war. Thaysen said he is working with regulators to try to reverse that, but "in the meantime, that business is declining, and we are expecting it to be flat." In fact, though China has historically been about 10% of the company's business, it contributed to half of the decline in earnings this past week. "China was never a huge part of Illumina's business. When it was the largest, it was just around 10%. We're down to 5% of the business," Thaysen told Yahoo Finance. But because of the tariff war and China's goals to boost its domestic innovation market, Illumina has faced a setback in its market power there from local competition. "As soon as there is a Chinese alternative that is good enough, then you will see that the Chinese government is pushing for the Chinese population, the Chinese companies to use that technology," Thaysen said. He added that even with the increased competition, China is an appealing market to remain in. Analysts are still waiting to see more progress on Illumina's return to growth. Jefferies analyst Tycho Peterson said in a note to clients that the firm will reiterate its Hold rating until things settle: "While the clinical traction is encouraging, we view clarity on near-term headwinds (A&G, China, Roche) and a path to sustainable HSD growth as key to a more constructive view. Reiterate Hold." Anjalee Khemlani is the senior health reporter at Yahoo Finance, covering all things pharma, insurance, provider services, digital health, PBMs, and health policy and politics. That includes GLP-1s, of course. Follow Anjalee as AnjKhem on social media platforms X, LinkedIn, and Bluesky @AnjKhem. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Hill
a day ago
- The Hill
Flu, COVID can reawaken dormant breast cancer cells: Study
Respiratory infections like COVID-19 and the flu can activate dormant cancer cells in breast cancer patients who are in remission, new research finds. The study, published in Nature, found that common viruses can reawaken small numbers of dormant breast cancer cells in the lungs. Researchers began investigating the link after the team noticed that U.K. patients who were in remission from breast cancer and tested positive for COVID later showed a two-fold increase in cancer-related deaths. They also analyzed a U.S. database that included nearly 37,000 patients and found that COVID infection was associated with a more than 40 percent increased risk of metastatic breast cancer in the lungs. Studies on mice found that influenza and COVID infections triggered dormant breast cancer cells after just days of infection. Within two weeks, researchers observed 'massive expansion' of the cancer cells into metastatic lesions by more than 100 times. Scientists have suspected that common viruses like Epstein-Barr can trigger some cancers. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is already documented to trigger cervical cancer. When it comes to breast cancer, however, research on human cells was limited, and it's not entirely known how the virus triggers the disease to spread. The findings suggest the body's immune response plays a role. After breast cancer goes into remission, a tiny number of cells remain dormant in lung, bone and liver tissue. Sometimes, inflammation can wake up the cells. In the mouse experiments, both influenza A and coronavirus only reawakened dormant cells if they triggered an inflammatory cytokine response. More research is needed to see if vaccination makes a difference when it comes to the possibility of reawakening dormant cells.
