Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio's research is frozen.
Collected from millions of US soldiers over two decades, using millions of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university’s TH Chan School of Public Health.
The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure for multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases.
For months, Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7 million in federal research funding, a casualty of Harvard's fight with the Trump administration.
“It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore the universe, and now we don’t have money to launch it,” said Ascherio.
“We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make new discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then, 'Poof, You're being cut off.'
Researchers laid off and science shelved
The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has meant that some of the world's most prominent scientists are laying off young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research, into everything from opioid addiction to cancer.
Despite Harvard's lawsuits against the administration and settlement talks between the warring parties, researchers are confronting the fact that some of their work may never resume.
The funding cuts are part of a months-long battle that the Trump administration has waged against some of the country's top universities, including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern.
The administration has taken a particularly aggressive stance against Harvard, freezing funding after the country's oldest university rejected a series of government demands issued by a federal antisemitism task force.
The government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment.
Research jeopardised, even if the court case prevails
Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university.
In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
“Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint.
“But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism.”
The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons.
