Impact of Trump administration’s cuts to Oklahoma medical research funding unclear

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s institutions are refusing to discuss the impacts of the Trump administration’s decision to cut federal research grants for projects with ties to diversity, equity and inclusion.

While most Oklahoma institutions declined to comment on or confirm specific grant cancellations, a third-party grant tracking project reported several DEI-related grants allocated to fund medical research in the state were canceled following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month. The nation’s high court, in a 5-4 decision, allowed the Trump administration to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars nationally that were awarded by the National Institutes of Health.

The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center reported losing the biggest share of funding.

In response to an open records request, the university confirmed three grants totaling $840,000 were cancelled as a result of the Supreme Court decision. A spokesperson for OU did not return multiple requests for comment or answer specific questions about the potential impact of the canceled grants.

One grant for nearly $270,000 was intended to recruit and train “under-represented students” to be competitive for admission to biomedical doctoral programs, according to the NIH grant rePORTER.

Another for $530,000 had the goal of improving patient immune responses against certain bacteria. The third grant, for $39,000, aimed to improve understanding of chromosome organization in order to better understand how disruptions impact cellular function, according to the records request and the NIH grant rePORTER.

The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation saw a grant worth $682,000 canceled, according to Grant Witness, a project tracking the termination of grants of scientific research agencies under the Trump administration. The grant was intended to study a new source of “innate lymphoid cells.”

A spokesperson for OMRF, an Oklahoma City nonprofit that conducts biomedical research, declined to discuss the status of the grant or say whether any federal research funding had been lost.

Mack Burke, a spokesperson for Oklahoma State University, confirmed none of the institution’s grants were affected by the Supreme Court decision. One project with NIH funding was completed as scheduled, he said. Grant Witness reported NIH granted over $473,000 to OSU for a project to support training of biomedical sciences doctoral students from “diverse backgrounds.”

A spokesperson for the Cherokee Nation did not return requests for comment confirming any NIH grant cancellations. Grant Witness reported NIH awarded the tribe a $2.9 million NIH grant to improve contact tracing, testing and education for COVID-19 for underserved and vulnerable populations, particularly in rural America and Native populations.

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