The System that Delivered the Possibility of mRNA Cancer Vaccines is Being Dismantled

For years, pancreatic cancer has been considered immune to immunotherapy. Its tumors were “cold”—invisible to the body’s natural defenses and resistant to treatments that worked against other cancers. Patients had fewer options and less hope.

Then Dr. Vinod Balachandran at Memorial Sloan Kettering asked a different question: What if pancreatic cancer wasn’t actually invisible to the immune system? What if it just needed the right signal?

His team began studying rare long-term survivors whose immune systems appeared to be doing something unusual—developing strong responses against unique mutations in their tumors. That insight became the foundation for personalized mRNA vaccines that are now making national headlines, showing remarkable results in helping patients avoid recurrence after surgery.

This breakthrough represents everything that works about strategic research investment. The Lustgarten Foundation recognized the potential years before it made news, funding the work when it was still considered a long shot. The results, published in Nature in 2023 and now generating widespread attention, prove that sustained investment in bold science can change what’s possible for patients with devastating diseases.

It also shows exactly what we’re now putting at risk.

THE NUMBERS DON’T LIE

Even as federal research grants have begun to flow again in recent weeks, the damage from the past year’s chaos is both measurable and severe. The numbers tell a story of systematic disruption to the research infrastructure that makes breakthroughs like Balachandran’s possible.

Just 13% of NIH applications were funded in the past fiscal year, the lowest success rate in the agency’s history. ⁴ At the National Cancer Institute, success rates for grant applications have plummeted from 1-in-10 to 1-in-25. Even proposals that scored in the top 10% had only a coin flip chance of being funded in 2025.⁵ The agency has fallen about $1 billion behind its typical timeline for awarding grants, affecting research on cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other critical areas.

As of late April, NIH had spent only $8 billion of its $47 billion budget—30% less than average spending at the same point from 2021-2024. ⁶ The agency posted only 125 funding opportunity notices in 2025 versus 756 in 2024, and just 14 so far in 2026.⁷ The human toll has been equally devastating. In early 2025, NIH terminated 2,291 active research grants, withdrawing $2.45 billion and disproportionately affecting women and early-career investigators. Among assistant professors, the researchers building the careers that will drive breakthroughs in the 2030s and beyond, 59.8% of terminated projects were led by women. The $2.5 billion in canceled grants translated to roughly $6.3 billion in lost economic output.

These aren’t abstract statistics. They represent the research workforce that will solve tomorrow’s medical challenges, develop next-generation treatments, and translate scientific discovery into clinical reality.

EXPERTISE, DISCARDED

The most shocking example of institutional degradation came on April 25, when the White House dismissed the entire National Science Board with a terse email providing no explanation.¹ The 25-member independent board, which oversees NSF’s $9 billion research portfolio, normally serves staggered six-year terms specifically to ensure continuity across political transitions.

While the White House later cited a 2021 Supreme Court decision about non-Senate confirmed appointees, the practical effect is devastating: NSF now has no board, no permanent director, and no deputy director.² The agency’s staff has fallen by about 35% from last year, and it plans to “consolidate” grant solicitations to half the usual number of funding opportunities.³

The administration had proposed a 55% cut to NSF’s budget, but Congress rejected the proposal and maintained funding at 2025 levels—demonstrating the bipartisan political will to support scientific research that contrasts sharply with the administrative chaos.

This represents something more destructive than funding cuts or administrative delays. It’s the deliberate elimination of institutional expertise that took decades to accumulate. These board members didn’t just oversee grant decisions they provided strategic guidance, identified emerging opportunities, and ensured that research investments aligned with national priorities. That knowledge walked out the door in a single afternoon. NSF has awarded new grants at the slowest pace in at least 35 years. Administrative bottlenecks and staffing challenges have left fewer personnel available to process grants, creating a cascade of delays that affect researchers nationwide.

THE TALENT DRAIN

The pattern has become disturbingly familiar: projects approved by scientific review panels but never funded due to administrative chaos and budget uncertainty. The administration canceled 22 separate mRNA research contracts, including work on vaccines for pediatric cancers. Researchers who had received approval found themselves scrambling to maintain their labs and redirect their careers.

This captures a crucial point about research infrastructure. The damage isn’t just about delayed projects or reduced funding levels, it’s about the talent we’re losing and the institutional relationships we’re destroying. When promising researchers leave science, when training programs shut down, when collaborative networks dissolve, the effects compound over decades.

The postdoc who leaves science today would have been leading a lab in 2030. The assistant professor whose funding disappears won’t be there to mentor the next cohort of researchers. The senior scientist who takes early retirement takes with them decades of accumulated expertise about what works, what doesn’t, and how to navigate complex research challenges.

WHEN THE SYSTEM WORKED

Balachandran’s mRNA vaccine success demonstrates what becomes possible when the research ecosystem functions as designed. The Lustgarten Foundation provided strategic early investment, recognizing the transformative potential before it was widely accepted. Federal funding supported the basic research infrastructure that made mRNA technology possible. Academic medical centers provide clinical expertise to test and refine the approach. Industry partners brought the resources to scale promising discoveries.

The results speak for themselves. Patients who mounted strong immune responses to the personalized mRNA vaccine were significantly less likely to see their cancer return. Some participants maintained active immune responses for nearly four years. For a cancer where recurrence rates remain devastatingly high, this represents a fundamental shift in what’s possible.

But this success required more than scientific insight. It demanded sustained funding, institutional stability, and the research infrastructure that allows discoveries to build on each other across institutions and decades. The current disruptions represent the loss of these capabilities.

WHAT WE’RE THROWING AWAY

At the Lustgarten Foundation, we understand this ecosystem dynamic in all its complexity. As the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research in the world, our investments succeed because they leverage the broader federal research infrastructure. We make strategic early investments in breakthrough science, but those investments multiply when they connect to sustained federal support for basic research, training programs, and institutional capacity.

When that infrastructure becomes unreliable, even the most strategic private investment loses effectiveness. Foundation funding cannot replace the scale and stability that federal investment provides.

Federal research funding consistently generates $2.57 for every dollar invested, supporting nearly 400,000 jobs and creating $94 billion in economic activity annually. But the economic argument, while compelling, misses the deeper point about research infrastructure. The breakthroughs that define medical progress, from mRNA vaccines to targeted cancer therapies to diagnostic advances, emerge from decades of accumulated knowledge and institutional capacity.

You cannot rebuild that capacity quickly once it’s lost. The expertise that guides strategic decisions, the relationships that enable collaboration, the institutional memory that prevents costly mistakes—these take decades to develop and can disappear in an afternoon.

THE NEXT CRISIS

Even as some federal funding has begun to resume, the past year has exposed dangerous fragilities in the research system. What happens the next time political priorities shift? How do we maintain the long-term thinking that breakthrough innovation requires when institutional expertise can be dismissed without explanation?

“When you lose institutional memory and eliminate the expertise that guides strategic decisions, you undermine our ability to translate discoveries into treatments,” said Dr. Elizabeth Jaffee, Chief Medical Advisor at the Lustgarten Foundation. “The research enterprise depends on stability and predictability. Without that foundation, promising discoveries may never reach the patients who need them.”

The children and adults facing devastating cancers deserve research systems that can deliver on their promises. The next generation of researchers whose careers were derailed may never return to science. The institutional knowledge that walked out of federal agencies won’t be easily replaced.

For pancreatic cancer patients, time is everything. Time to access effective treatment, to watch children grow up, to plan for futures that too often feel uncertain. Balachandran’s breakthrough changes what patients can imagine for themselves, not just new treatments, but new categories of possibility.

That’s what strategic, sustained investment in research infrastructure makes possible. Not just solutions to today’s challenges, but the capacity to respond to tomorrows with the speed and effectiveness that breakthrough innovation requires.

We know how to build research ecosystems that deliver transformative results. Medical research and cancer research command overwhelming public support across party lines. Recent polling shows that 74% of voters support federal investment in scientific research, with more than 8 in 10 Americans believing it’s important for the United States to be the global leader in scientific research and technology.¹² Support for NIH funding has actually increased during the current administration: more than 90% say it’s important for the U.S. to lead in medical research, with only 8% saying the government spends too much on research.¹³

Congress demonstrated this popular will by rejecting the administration’s proposed 55% cut to NSF and maintaining NIH funding at previous levels despite White House pressure.¹¹ The question is whether our political system can maintain the sustained investment that breakthrough science requires despite administrative hostility to the institutions that make it possible.

TAKE ACTION

Congress has shown it will defend research funding when constituents make their voices heard. As a member of the Lustgarten community, you know how important research is to new treatment options, earlier detection, and personalized medicine. Contact your senators and representatives to let them know you support sustained federal investment in medical research. Find your representatives’ contact information at congress.gov.

Do it now while you are thinking about it and share this post with your friends and families and ask them to call their representatives as well.

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¹ “Board Ouster Raises Further Concerns About NSF’s Future,” Inside Higher Ed, April 27, 2026.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid.

⁴ “Securing NIH awards is getting more competitive — and confusing,” STAT, April 30, 2026.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ “Board Ouster Raises Further Concerns About NSF’s Future,” Inside Higher Ed, April 27, 2026.

¹² “New National Poll Finds Strong Bipartisan Support for Federal Investments in Scientific Research,” The Science Coalition, April 30, 2025.

¹³ “Sources: White House to propose 20 percent cut to NIH funding,” Roll Call, March 27, 2026.