Meredith Wadman,WashingtonBudget pressures caused by flat funding atthe US National Institutes of Health (NIH)are beginning to take their toll on researchtraining,grant applicants say.

The prestigious NIH training grants thatsupport nearly 18,000 graduate students andpostdoctoral fellows are in trouble as the sizeof the stipend they offer increases, while thepot of money that funds them is unchanged.

Furthermore,most of the available moneyis already committed to the multi-year grantsthat were awarded when the biomedicalresearch agency’s budget was going up,earlierin the decade. The upshot is that applicants’chances of success have fallen sharply — by asmuch as half at some institutes.

At Cornell University’s Weill MedicalCollege in New York City, for example, oneimmunologist’s application to renew a $1.9-million, five-year NIH training grantsupporting seven graduate students andpostdocs was turned down earlier thismonth. William Muller, the senior scientistwho wrote the grant application, had earlierreceived a written evaluation from theNational Institute of Allergy and InfectiousDiseases (NIAID) acknowledging an “excel-lent… application” from “high caliber pre-ceptors”with “an excellent training record”.

But two weeks ago, Muller got a call say-ing the grant would not be funded this year,because the institute was funding only 25%

of training grant applications.Last year,55%of NIAID training grants were funded — atypical figure in recent years.

NIAID officials say that a relatively smallnumber of training awards are made, andthat the success rate fluctuates.After changesin the next few months, the final award ratefor the year “could be anywhere from 25% to55%”, says John McGowan, director of theinstitute’s extramural division. “Our insti-tute is firmly committed to training,”he says,“but if outgoing commitments go up andthere are no new dollars,we will have to makesome tough decisions.”

The NIAID is not the only institute strug-gling to cope as the NIH deals with a 2004budget increase of only 2.8% — less than the

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Trainee let down as allergy institute withdraws supportBidisha Dasgupta (right), a fifth-year graduate student inimmunology at CornellUniversity’s Weill Medical College,was “definitely disappointed”when she heard from her mentorWilliam Muller last Friday thattheir lab had had its grant requestturned down.The $1.9-millionNational Institute of Allergy andInfectious Diseases grant would have funded herand six other trainees over the next five years.

Dasgupta, who studies blood-celltransmigration, has been supported by a training

grant for the past two years. Now,Muller will have to find anotherway to fund her $25,000 annualstipend.

“It underlines how much harderit is to get funding right now,”says Dasgupta. “This was one ofthe more standard grants in ourinstitution. And if this has beencut, I am sure other grants will be

even more competitive.”Dasgupta says that an NIH training grant is a

valuable addition to a CV. A 2001 report writtenfor the NIH by Georgine Pion of Vanderbilt

University in Nashville, Tennessee, found that the8–10% of young scientists receiving these grantswere subsequently more likely to obtain tenure-track academic positions, find jobs at top-tieruniversities, obtain full research grants on theirown and publish well-cited papers. These grants“are an incredibly effective way to train people”,says Walter Schaffer, acting director of the NIH’sOffice of Extramural Programs.

For Dasgupta, the training grant’s separatetravel budget meant she could attend scientificconferences. She thinks the loss will alsoadversely affect Cornell, which “used the traininggrants as a recruiting tool”. Meredith Wadman

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3.8% increase needed to maintain its purchasing power. At the National CancerInstitute, for example, officials speakinganonymously say that they expect to fundabout half as many new institutional train-ing grants as they did last year, when 46% ofapplications were supported.“It is not a goodpicture right now — especially for training,”

says one of them.Walter Schaffer, the act-

ing director of the NIH’sOffice of Extramural Pro-grams who is in charge oftraining grants, says he does

not have an overall 2004 figure for the successrates of training grant applications. “You aregoing to have to cut back on the total numberof people you fund in order to finance cost-of-living increases,”says Schaffer.

The NIAID spent $51 million on traininggrants in 2003,a figure that will increase slight-ly in 2004.Overall,the NIH has $749 million tospend on training grants in 2004; that wouldincrease to $763 million in 2005 if Congressfulfils President George Bush’s budget request.

But the size of individual stipends givenby the NIH has been increasing in responseto complaints that many young scientists are underpaid and, in effect, exploited (seechart).After fulfilling commitments to exist-ing five-year grants, including cost-of-livingincreases, little is left for new grants or com-petitive renewals,officials say. ■

Young biologists rejected as NIHbudget squeezes training grants

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