US Infectious Disease Institute Shifts Focus Away from Biodefense and Pandemic Preparedness

Staff members at the United States’s premier infectious-disease research institute have been instructed to remove the words “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the institute’s web pages, according to e-mails Nature has obtained. The directive comes amid a broader shake-up at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of 27 institutes and centres at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NIAID is expected to deprioritize the two topics in an overhaul of its funded research projects, according to four NIAID employees who spoke to Nature on the condition of anonymity, because they are not authorized to speak to the press. NIH director Jay Bhattacharya explained the restructure at an event with other top agency officials on 30 January. “It’s a complete transformation of [the NIAID] away from this old model” that has historically prioritized research on HIV, biodefence and pandemic preparedness, he said. The institute will focus more on basic immunology and other infectious diseases currently affecting people in the United States, he added, rather than on predicting future diseases.

About one-third of the NIAID’s US$6.6-billion budget currently funds projects involving emerging infectious diseases and biodefence. The research studies pathogens of concern and monitors their spread, and develops medical countermeasures against threats from radiation exposure, chemicals and infectious diseases.

Nahid Bhadelia, director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Massachusetts, says the decision to deprioritize these areas will leave people in the United States more vulnerable to pathogens that are constantly evolving in wildlife around the world and spilling into human populations, sometimes sparking outbreaks. “Just because we say we’re going to stop caring about these issues doesn’t make the issues go away — it just makes us less prepared,” she says.

A spokesperson for the NIH, the world’s largest public funder of biomedical science, based in Bethesda, Maryland, says, “NIAID’s new vision sharpens its focus on the interconnected pillars of infectious diseases and immunology, expanding opportunities for research that address the most pressing challenges to Americans’ health today.” The spokesperson declined to respond to Nature's queries about the agency’s specific plans to restructure the institute.

The NIAID is currently under the leadership of acting director Jeffery Taubenberger, after its previous director, infectious-disease physician Jeanne Marrazzo, was fired by the administration of US President Donald Trump after less than two years into the post. Her predecessor, Anthony Fauci, held the job for 38 years. Fauci and the institute have been scrutinized by Trump and other Republican politicians as a result of public-health measures used during the COVID-19 pandemic — such as lockdowns and school closures — which they say resulted in people losing trust in the country’s health agencies. (During the pandemic, Fauci offered recommendations on how to prevent the spread of the virus, but neither Fauci nor the NIAID set policy for public-health measures.)

To restore trust, Bhattacharya, Taubenberger and Taubenberger’s senior adviser, John Powers, outlined a “new vision” for the institute in a commentary published in Nature Medicine on 16 January. “NIAID’s work clearly neither prevented the pandemic nor prevented Americans from experiencing among the highest levels of all-cause excess mortality in the developed world during that time,” they wrote. “Given the increasing prevalence of allergic and autoimmune disorders and the burden of common infections in the population over the past few decades, the NIAID must focus research on these conditions with a greater sense of urgency.”

The instructions to agency staff members to rebrand the institute’s language are only the first step towards implementing this new vision, according to the NIAID employees. NIH principal deputy director Matthew Memoli has ordered more changes, including the review of the portfolio of grants funding biodefence and pandemic preparedness, in the coming weeks and months, they say.

If funds are allocated to other topics, “that’s a very big deal”, Bhadelia says. Few other US agencies have the budget or infrastructure to fund basic research into these topics, says Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity specialist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

Taubenberger hinted during the 30 January event that a reallocation is coming. “To better prepare for the future [we need to] better deal with what we’re facing today,” he said. “Maybe a better way to look at this is ‘people preparedness’. One way for people to be prepared is to be healthier, eat better and exercise, so you’re less likely to get sick or have a poor outcome,” Powers added.

This priority is important, Bhadelia says, but “the new vision is remarkable not for what’s included — but what’s excluded. It almost paints a picture of ‘one or the other.’ In reality, these things interact with each other.” For example, people with chronic conditions are at greater risk during a pandemic, she says.

Gronvall adds that this approach is “full of hubris”. “We know that there are groups of viruses that are more likely to cause illness, epidemics and pandemics,” she says, so it makes sense to study them. For example, Bhadelia adds, the anticipatory basic research that the NIAID has funded helped make it possible to develop COVID-19 vaccines in record time, which “allowed us to reduce mortality” from the pandemic.

The restructure is also expected to target the NIAID division focusing on HIV/AIDS research, which oversees a $1.5-billion portfolio of projects developing therapeutics and vaccines against the virus. The division’s 33 branches will likely be consolidated, one NIAID employee tells Nature. But it’s not clear whether the total number of projects or amount of money the division doles out will be impacted, the employee adds.

Almost 20% of the NIH’s 2024 workforce of 21,000 have been laid off or have left voluntarily since Trump took office last January. The NIH spokesperson declined to say whether there will be further layoffs of NIAID staff members as part of the restructure. “Everyone is worried about what comes next,” an institute employee says.