Facing possible funding cuts, MDI Bio Lab president makes a case on Capitol Hill

A person sits at a table with other people behind him.

Screenshot / Courtesy U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee “Federal funding for biomedical research is not just a cost. It’s a national investment,” Hermann Haller, president of MDI Bio Lab, told a U.S. Senate committee.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Loss of funding in biomedical research will detract from life-saving research and biomedical breakthroughs, said Hermann Haller, president of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, a nonprofit hub for the science of aging and regeneration in Bar Harbor.

“Federal funding for biomedical research is not just a cost. It’s a national investment” that drives innovation, fuels the economy and protects health, Haller told the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee.

Haller was a witness at the committee’s hearing on Wednesday on “Biomedical Research: Keeping America’s Edge in Innovation,” led by U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and and Patty Murray, D-Washington, the committee’s chair and vice chair.

During her opening statement, Collins noted that biomedical innovation in the U.S. is of immense economic value to the nation” generating $2.50 for each dollar invested through the National Institutes of Health and supporting 400,000 jobs.

In Maine, NIH grants and contracts support 1,468 jobs and $286 million in economic activity.

Collins asked Haller how the NIH’s proposed 15% cap on indirect costs, also known as facilities and administrative costs, would affect biomedical research in Maine and institutions across the country.

Haller said that independent research institutions like MDI Bio Lab, which don’t have large endowments nor tuition revenues, depend on the present system of indirect cost reimbursement as part of their overall funding system. Before scientists can start using grant money to do research, he said, they have to be provided with sophisticated laboratory space, services and supplies needed to be able to carry out the research, which are the indirect costs.

“So there is always room for improvement, and we are open for discussions,” he said. “But the proposed 15% cap endangers our work and the work of all the other independent research institutions, and we will not be able to participate in what we have heard here, in life-saving research and biomedical breakthroughs.”

Collins noted that grant-based research at university and private labs is funded through the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and many other federal agencies.

“In the years following World War II, the U.S. emerged as the global leader in science and technology, accounting for 69% of global R&D across all fields by the year 1960,” Collins said. “Proposed funding cuts, the firing of essential federal scientists, and policy uncertainties threaten to undermine the foundation for our nation's global leadership."

Earlier this year, several biomedical organizations in Maine said funding cuts would affect them.

How Maine might be affected

In 2024, MDI Biological Laboratory NIH grants included $19.4 million to renew and expand a network of research and higher education institutions called the Maine IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence and a $6 million funding renewal related to its light microscopy facility.

At the time, Haller said NIH’s proposed 15% cap “remains a major threat” to its mission, would decrease a typical year’s grant support by 27% and would slow, and in some cases could end, front-line biomedical research projects; limit training opportunities for college students and early-career scientists; and imperil job stability.

Jackson Laboratory — a nonprofit biomedical research institution headquartered in Bar Harbor — said the cap, if implemented, “threatens the entire biomedical research community and has the potential to disrupt discoveries into the lifesaving treatments all Americans depend on.”

Deborah Bronk, president, CEO and a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, said $5 million in National Science Foundation grants that were recommended for funding is in limbo and contracts have been lost for fee-for-service activities from other places that are losing funding.

In April, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey signed onto a lawsuit brought by 21 other attorneys general, suing the Trump Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and NIH for slashing $11 billion in federal funding, with the cuts impacting medical and public health research at multiple universities and research institutions around the country.

In Maine, nearly $91 million in funding is being frozen from six grant programs at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Behavioral Health, and is expected to have significant effects on a wide range of essential services and jobs.

Haller and other speakers pointed out that biomedical research has real-world benefits.

“The lives we save tomorrow depend on the decisions we make today,” Haller said at Wednesday's hearing.

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