Membership at many of the high-level advisory coucils for the US National Institutes of Health is dwindling ― a decline that could trigger a freeze in issuance of some grants.Credit: Grandbrothers/Alamy
Crucial grant-review panels for more than half of the institutes that make up the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) are on track to lose all their voting members within the year. Federal law requires these panels to review applications for all but the smallest grants before funding can be awarded, meaning that the ability of those institutes to issue new grants could soon be frozen.
All of the NIH’s 21 institutes and three of its six centres have their own panel, called an advisory council. Membership on the councils has been dwindling as members serve out their terms without replacements being appointed. At 12 of the institutes and one of the centres, the last voting member’s term is set to expire by the end of this year, according to rosters on federal websites (see ‘Shrinking pool of advisers’). It typically takes several years for a new member to be onboarded.
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Dozens of scientists who were poised to fill these vacancies were dismissed last year by the administration of US President Donald Trump, Nature reported in July.
If the advisory councils go dormant, “this could lead to some very big problems for the agency”, says Michael Lauer, who for about ten years ran the NIH’s ‘extramural’ arm, which funds researchers at institutions across the United States. “No grants can get funded without approval from council.”
This comes after the Trump administration blocked and delayed NIH funding in several ways. For example, in early 2025, the administration barred the agency from publishing the notices required to hold grant-review sessions, contributing to a federal watchdog’s finding that the NIH was illegally withholding money allocated by the US Congress.
A spokesperson for the NIH's parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, responds that she does not “anticipate any lapse in our ability to make awards”, adding that “we are actively appointing new council members”. Publicly available advisory-council rosters have not been updated with any new members since September, Nature's analysis shows.
Independent scrutiny
NIH grant applications are considered in two stages, by separate panels. The first is a study section in which a group of independent scientists meets to score applications. The second is a review by the awarding institute’s advisory council, which consists of scientists and other advisers inside and outside the NIH.
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