Contact: Mike Frick, TB project co-director mike.frick@treatmentactiongroup.org

New York City, July 24, 2025 — Treatment Action Group (TAG) opposes in the strongest possible terms the suspension of at least 22 TB research awards by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) following a May 2025 White House executive order banning “gain-of-function” research.[1] The term “gain-of-function” is typically applied to research that explicitly intends to enhance the ability of a microbe to cause disease, but the definition has become increasingly muddied in recent years as a consequence of extensive bad faith conspiracy theorizing around the origins of COVID-19.

The suspensions are in response to White House executive order, Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research, which instructs the Office of Science and Technology Policy to work with relevant executive departments and agencies to end “dangerous gain-of-function research” conducted in certain countries, such as China, and to suspend federally funded gain-of-function research until revision of 2024 guidance on the topic due later this year.

As reported by Science, Nature, and the Washington Post last week, the suspended awards — numbering more than 40 in total, at least 22 of them related to TB by TAG’s count — are the outcome of an internal administrative NIH review of its grants to identify those that meet the definition of “dangerous gain-of-function research” set out in the executive order.

A letter from NIH Deputy Director Matthew Memoli to the White House and obtained by Science flags an additional 172 awards for potential suspension; it is not clear how many of these are related to TB.

Based on TAG’s review, the number of affected TB grants exceeds the tally included in earlier media reports and is at least as high as 22 awards. The suspended TB projects represent a rich array of basic science studies seeking to improve fundamental understandings of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and how it interacts with the human immune system in order to identify new therapeutic and vaccination targets. Twelve of the suspended TB awards are flagged under category c of the executive order’s gain-of-function definition: “conferring to the agent or toxin resistance to clinically or agriculturally useful prophylactic or therapeutic interventions against that agent or toxin or facilitating their ability to evade detection methodologies.”

Most of the suspended studies deploy common scientific techniques to identify specific genes or genetic pathways through which Mycobacterium tuberculosis develops resistance to antibiotics, persists despite treatment, or evades the immune system. Other studies explicitly seek to hamstring the TB organism, not strengthen it. Far from conferring TB with additional resistance, the studies represent carefully designed efforts to confront drug resistance and immune evasion that already exists and overcome the fitness TB has acquired in nature from many thousands of years of co-evolution with humans.

TAG’s assessment is borne out by the Washington Post’s revelation that Memoli overrode the determination of agency experts to add nearly a dozen TB studies deemed safe by NIH reviewers to the list. As pointed out by the American Society for Microbiology and other experts, the executive order seems to significantly broaden the definition of gain-of-function research to implicate standard techniques, many decades old, implemented under a rigorous system of regulatory, ethical, and biosafety guidelines for minimizing potential harms. All of the suspended awards underwent rigorous peer review and were found to comply with existing rules on managing potential biohazard risks; their post-hoc suspension raises concerns about the scientific integrity of the internal review process kicked off by the executive order.

“The administration’s new policy on gain-of-function research is a poison arrow directed at infectious disease more broadly,” commented TAG executive director Mark Harrington. “Studying a pathogen like TB involves working on the pathogen. Not all work on pathogens involves making them stronger or changing them in ways that pose a credible danger. The interpretation of gain-of-function used here is so broad that, if codified in revised federal policy, the approach taken would effectively end many necessary studies out of excess caution predicated on a profound misunderstanding of decades of research to combat infectious diseases.”

In TAG’s view, the suspended TB studies do not pose a substantial risk to the American public in comparison with the clear and present danger of TB, which is the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. Last year, TB killed 1.3 million people and over 10 million people fell ill with the disease.[2] Every U.S. state reports cases of TB annually, and TB rates in the United States, although low, have increased each year since 2020.[3] In early 2025, one of the largest TB outbreaks in recent US history strained local government resources in Missouri and Kansas.[4] Rates of tuberculosis among Alaskan native populations are increasing and rival those seen in TB-endemic countries like South Africa and India.[5]

In addition to interrupting lifesaving science, the suspensions will threaten jobs and take money away from universities and their surrounding economies in 10 states representing all regions of the country, including Arkansas, California, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.

“These funding suspensions are just the latest disruption to federal research support for TB and other infectious diseases following a ceaseless series of executive orders, funding suspensions targeting specific universities, grant terminations, and procedural delays that have upended America’s legacy of leadership in this area,” said Mike Frick, TB project co-director at TAG. “The Trump administration has put the health of all Americans at risk by setting back efforts to develop the drugs, vaccines, and intervention strategies required to protect communities in the United States and around the world from TB.”

TAG calls on the NIH to reinstate funding for the suspended TB awards immediately and on the Administration to ensure that any revised policies on gain-of-function research are based on scientific evidence and rational oversight and free from the arbitrary and capricious application seen here.

# # # 

About TAG: Treatment Action Group (TAG) is an independent, activist and community-based research and policy think tank fighting for better treatment, prevention, a vaccine, and a cure for HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis C virus. TAG works to ensure that all people with HIV, TB, and HCV receive lifesaving treatment, care, and information. We are science-based treatment activists working to expand and accelerate vital research and effective community engagement with research and policy institutions.

[1] White House. Improving the safety and security of biological research. 5 May 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-of-biological-research/

[2] World Health Organization. Global tuberculosis report 2024. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240101531.

[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Reported tuberculosis in the United States, 2023. Atlanta: CDC; 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/tb-surveillance-report-2023/summary/national.html.

[4] McConnell E, Martinez-Wright K, Lovinger L. The Kansas City TB outbreak shows the value of U.S. government health funding. STAT. 19 February 2025. https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/19/tuberculosis-kansas-city-missouri-tb-outbreak-treatment/

[5] State of Alaska Department of Health. Tuberculosis in Alaksa: summary brief 2022. https://health.alaska.gov/media/yziaca2z/2022-ak-tb-summary-brief.pdf .