Harvard Medical School is an epicenter of biomedical discovery with a long history of transformative scientific advances and innovations that have improved, extended, and saved the lives of countless people. Right now, our promising research across a range of disease areas – cancer, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and more – faces an existential threat due to federal funding cuts targeted at Harvard.
To date, more than 350 federal grants and contracts at HMS have been terminated by the government, representing approximately $230 million in funding each year. These terminations also jeopardize more than 230 outgoing HMS subawards to hospitals and academic research institutions in 23 states and in Washington, DC – including more than 100 at HMS-affiliated hospitals and the Broad Institute – who have specialized expertise and equipment needed to collaborate on and carry out this important lifesaving and life-altering research.
Federal grants are not gifts; rather, the U.S. government identified these research projects as priorities for the American people and selected researchers at Harvard for this funding through a highly competitive process led by impartial peers.
The future of this research – funded by taxpayers and done in service to humanity – now hangs in the balance and threatens to disrupt the promise of new discoveries, medicines, devices, and improvements in clinical care.
As we navigate this period of instability and uncertainty, gifts to Harvard Medical School help to bridge critical funding gaps and sustain independent research.
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© 2025 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College