MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Immunologist Dennis Burton got some bad news recently. On the last Friday in May, he learned that the Trump administration was going to end a project he'd co-led for nearly 15 years. Its purpose was to develop a vaccine against AIDS.
DENNIS BURTON: It's devastating. It's very, very dispiriting. So much effort, so much human toil has gone into this, and now that's just going to be thrown away just when we look like we could beat this virus.
MARTIN: NPR's Jonathan Lambert picks up the story.
JONATHAN LAMBERT, BYLINE: It wasn't just Dennis Burton who was devastated. Many researchers in the field believed they were getting closer than ever to developing a vaccine against AIDS after nearly 40 years of trying. Burton was part of a $258 million project called the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development that's been at the cutting edge of trying to solve a really difficult problem. Here's Burton again.
BURTON: It's one of the most difficult problems there is in biomedicine. One of the most formidable things about HIV is that it's not just one virus, it's hundreds of thousands of different strains of virus.
LAMBERT: That makes HIV really good at dodging the immune system's first responders - antibodies. Burton and his colleagues at Scripps Research Institute, along with Duke University, were working on ways of coaxing the immune system to make what are called broadly neutralizing antibodies.
BURTON: They're able to recognize different strains, and they're very potent.
LAMBERT: Animal studies suggest this strategy could work, and human trials were slated to start next year, but now those trials likely won't happen.
Here's Mark Feinberg, CEO of IAVI, a nonprofit that develops vaccines.
MARK FEINBERG: It's really disappointing at this time, which is really more promising in the HIV vaccine effort than ever before, to have the foundation kicked out from underneath you.
LAMBERT: In a statement to NPR, a spokesperson for HHS says that they're trying to end what they call wasteful and inefficient spending. The Trump administration's cuts go far beyond just one project.
Linda-Gail Bekker is with the University of Cape Town. She was part of a big USAID-funded project to develop and test HIV vaccine candidates in Africa, including ones developed by Burton's grant. Just days before her team was set to start clinical trials, they got a stop work order from the U.S. government.
LINDA-GAIL BEKKER: So ill-timed and such a tragedy. It felt like the stars were beginning to align for the field, again, after, you know, sort of going through the valley of despair of not having success.
LAMBERT: She and her colleagues are scrambling to find other sources of funding, but the U.S. will be tough to replace. In 2022, it accounted for nearly 90% of total HIV vaccine research-spending worldwide. In a climate of widespread grant cancellations and talk of over 40% cuts to research funding next year, many scientists fear recent advances will stall out.
BEKKER: We need all our energy to win the scientific war, and now we have to fight this turning away from the science, a real disregard for the need for an HIV vaccine.
LAMBERT: While effective treatments do exist for HIV, Bekker says that only a vaccine can ultimately end the pandemic. She believes the field will eventually get back on track, but that will take time. Time, she says, that will cost many lives that might have been saved by a vaccine.
Jonathan Lambert, NPR News.
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