April 2025

Faculty Address Future of Research Funding

April 30, 2025   |   Holly Moody-Porter

Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) conducted a panel discussion April 13 with members of the media on the ongoing impacts of cuts to federally funded research. The panel offered several insights on how lifesaving interventions could be hampered by the loss of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) like clinical trials exploring the use of GLP-1 antagonists to treat drug addictions and the development of blood tests for early cancer diagnosis.

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, opened the panel, which featured several NIH-funded faculty across the School of Medicine: Wilbur Chen, MD, Sarah Kattakuzhy, MD, and Stuart Martin, PhD. It also featured faculty at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, University of Maryland School of Nursing, and University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, including Man-Kyo Chung, DMD, PhD, Ian Kleckner, PhD, MPH, Audra Stinchcomb, PhD, and Kim Mooney-Doyle, PhD, RN, all esteemed leaders in their respective fields.

UMB has recently seen several clinical trials that were underway halted from a sudden cessation in grant funding and is the process of considering appeals.

“This wave of underfunding is hitting us,” Gladwin, who is also vice president for medical affairs at UMB and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, said in his opening remarks. “NIH has awarded $2.8 billion less in funding than this time last year. We have nearly $60 million in grants this year that have fundable scores and are on hold.”

Each faculty member presented critical examples of current and future advancements in medicine that could be at risk.

Pending continued federal funding, Kattakuhzy, who is associate professor of medicine at the Institute of Human Virology at UMSOM and associate director of the Kahlert Institute for Addiction Medicine, is set to launch a first-of-its-kind clinical trial examining the effectiveness of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic in treating cocaine use disorder. Nearly 50 percent of people use cocaine alongside opioids and emerging research suggests that semaglutide may influence impulse control. “We want to explore if this is safe and efficacious,” Kattakuhzy said. “People with cocaine use disorder have no viable therapeutic options right now.”

Martin, who is deputy director of the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center and interim chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at UMSOM, discussed potential impacts in the ability to detect cancer early. A recent advancement in cancer screening includes a liquid biopsy or blood test that can detect it more than one year before imaging scans. It was made possible by the Human Genome Project and NIH research, which sequences mutated DNA shed by tumors into the bloodstream.

“Cancer is a disease that affects many American citizens and impacts many families,” he said. “Research is really the only way to make progress and improve the treatment of cancer.”

Faculty at the UM Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center have treated nearly 200,000 Marylanders and are currently undertaking more than 250 active clinical trials.