Yesterday, the Trump Administration imposed a wide range of restrictions on the National Institutes of Health (NIH): a pause on all external communications, a hiring freeze, a travel ban and, perhaps most crucially, the cancellation of grant review panels, until at least February 1. These panels, where a team of NIH experts review research proposals, are required before the $47.4 billion agency will disburse money to support research by hospitals, universities and biotech companies.

The biggest chunk of this money goes toward cancer research. The NIH’s budget has a $7.1 billion annual budget for the National Cancer Institute, of which more than $3 billion a year is allocated directly towards research for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer, which causes over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. The rest goes to patient care, training and disseminating information related to the disease.

The NCI supports 72 individual cancer centers, which provide cutting-edge care to cancer patients while also carrying out research on new ways to treat and prevent it. It also supports over 5,000 grant recipients such as research hospitals and universities. It partners with the private sector to provide monetary support for promising technologies, like potential new treatments for cancer treatment, or new devices for cancer diagnosis and screening. NCI funding has directly led to several of the most widely used cancer drugs today. A research pause threatens this entire ecosystem, which is responsible for helping reduce mortality rates from cancer by 34% since 1991, according to the American Cancer Society.

“While we are closely watching developments, it’s too soon to know all of the implications of this decision,” John Carpten, chief scientific officer at cancer research hospital City of Hope, told Forbes in a statement.

The NIH, NCI and White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“I cannot stress enough the damage this will do to people, and to US supremacy in research.”

The pause has the biggest impact on individual scientists, who rely on NIH grants to support their ongoing research into cancer. These grants not only provide for lab equipment but also pay their salaries and the salaries of their team. Delays in reviewing grants risks creating gaps in laboratory funding — and potentially job losses and the interruption of vital research. (While the grant panel pause is currently through February 1, rescheduling the missed meetings will likely lead to delays beyond that date.)

“Almost every American university and college that does substantial biology research is able to do so because of federal support,” Sam Wang, a neuroscientist at Princeton, wrote on Bluesky. “Hundreds of faculty, postdocs, and students at my university alone. I cannot stress enough the damage this will do to people, and to US supremacy in research.”

These risks aren’t hypothetical. NCI-supported university research has led to innovative ways to diagnose, prevent and treat cancer. For example, NCI dollars funded the research that led to a vaccine to HPV, which causes cervical cancer. Since that vaccine was approved by the FDA in 2006, cervical cancer deaths have plunged 65%. It’s been good for the economy, too. Merck, which manufactures the vaccine, reported that its global sales hit $8.9 billion in 2023.

These research dollars don’t only support university professors. Many treatments for cancer have their origins in biotech startups that spin out of university research. When these companies are in their early stages, support from NIH can be a crucial source of capital. That’s particularly important now, as continuing high interest rates are likely to shift investor dollars away from early-stage companies.

For example, NCI research led to the development of rituximab, the first approved antibody therapy for cancer. This type of cancer drug is now one of the main ways cancer is treated. But during its development by IDEC Pharmaceuticals (now Biogen), the NCI also funded the crucial clinical trials that were needed to obtain FDA approval.

The NCI also works with larger and more established companies. For example, it collaborated with both Pfizer and Moderna to support research into cancer vaccines. (That support paid off unexpectedly during the recent pandemic, when the same technology was applied to develop Covid vaccines). It’s also supporting pharmaceutical company BridgeBio Oncology Therapeutics on clinical trials for a cancer drug that was discovered using supercomputing research from the Department of Energy.

Beyond funding for cancer research, the NCI also supports a number of clinical trials for new drugs across the nation. Crucially, it manages the review boards that approve new clinical trials for cancer treatments. Those boards also appear to be paused, which means that testing for potentially lifesaving drugs is also delayed. Historically, these clinical trials give patients the opportunity to have their lives extended for months or years. For them, a few weeks’ delay in being involved in such a trial isn’t just an inconvenience.

It’s a matter of life or death.