Slotkin, MSU Cancer Researcher Highlight Federal Funding Cuts In Couric Interview

Michigan Advance

July 17, 2025

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin and renowned Michigan State University cancer researcher Dr. Jamie Bernard said on Wednesday that cuts to federal National Institutes of Health grants will cause a crisis in cancer research and force Americans to be reliant on other nations for medicines, vaccines, and cures, especially as those nations accelerate research in the absence of American leadership.

Slotkin, a Democrat from Holly, and Bernard were guests on a live stream hosted by journalist and former network television news anchor Katie Couric, who now operates on the independent publishing platform Substack.

Couric was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 and has been an advocate for colon cancer awareness for decades after her first husband died from the disease in 1998.

Slotkin’s story with cancer is also personal – her mother died of ovarian cancer in 2011 after being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 30s. Her mother’s fight with the disease and the subsequent battle to secure health care due to her pre-existing diagnosis, as well as the fact that she wasn’t insured when she was diagnosed because of those roadblocks, was a hallmark of Slotkin’s decision to seek elected office.

Bernard has been a researcher with MSU since 2015 and helped develop a screening technique to identify chemopreventive agents, which can prevent or slow down the development of cancer. She said the Trump administration’s attacks on cancer research have made it extremely difficult to continue her breast cancer research. The administration recently made additional deep cuts to cancer research institutions around the nation, including at MSU.

Couric noted that the National Institutes of Health has a history of providing more than $35 billion to research groups, universities, hospitals, and scientists a year, which goes to direct and indirect costs.

Bernard said those research dollars were critical to innovation and therapeutic success.

“That money goes directly to laboratories like my own, and also for collaborative research. So it’s really important that doctors from different disciplines can talk to each other and use funds for a common goal that really helps move the research forward,” Bernard said. “Those monies are going directly to funding the studies that lead to the innovation in the therapeutic potential.”

The indirect costs funded by the NIH are also important in supporting research work, like facilities with equipment researchers share.

“This is a very efficient way to do research… We can share with other people,” Bernard said. “It also is important for our analyses of our data and how we interpret it and how we talk to each other. Those types of monies are currently under attack by the Trump administration. They are fighting in court to cap the overhead.”

Bernard said they’ve been able to block some of those moves in court, but the funding is only temporary and are also now the subject of appeals. Bernard added that the new proposal from the Trump administration is to cut those indirect dollars by a third, which she said would be devastating.

Slotkin said elected officials are now hearing “a loud collective scream from our research institutions” in Michigan about what the caps and the proposed cuts would do to research programs across the board.

Speaking about ovarian cancer, specifically, Slotkin said the disease is very hard to detect up until the time a person becomes ill from the disease. Because her mom passed away from that form of cancer, she attends a great number of ovarian cancer events in support of additional research. It was through those efforts that Slotkin met a doctor at Johns Hopkins University who piloted a simple blood test that can identify Stage I ovarian cancer.

“It could be revolutionary for women facing ovarian cancer, and she had an NIH grant, and they stopped payment,” Slotkin said of the federal government. “They stopped the money because somehow her project was ‘too woke.’ It was only exclusive for one group, because women are the ones with ovaries.”

Sloktin said that the doctor can no longer continue her research, and that was just one example of the dramatic effects the cuts could have on women and others across the nation.

“Thes are the stories that when you tell people, even people who are strong supporters of President Trump, when you tell them that story, you can see the blood kind of drain from their faces,” Slotkin said. “Especially if they have a loved one who’s prone to different forms of cancer.”

Couric asked Bernard if there were other avenues to make up for the lack of funding from the federal government, like private and philanthropic funding. Bernard said she also seeks out those two funding streams for research, but the dollars there simply weren’t enough to make up for the large federal dollars researchers have come to rely on.

“It’s absolutely a possibility that my lab will shut down in five years,” Bernard said. “I could continue to teach, I could continue to provide services at the university, but I will look at other universities, as well. I’m a cancer researcher. That’s what I want to do. It’s not a passion project for me. This is about saving lives.”

Couric noted that the cuts to research funding were not across the board, and wondered if conservative and Trump-supporting states were getting more research money than those who typically have a more liberal voting population.

Slotkin said that was something congressional leaders were watching very closely. She also said that some of her more conservative colleagues, like Republican U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, have been speaking loudly about the cuts to her state’s premier research school at the University of Alabama. Couric noted that the university was a top-tier cancer research facility.

Slotkin said there was also a national security component to the cuts, with China quadrupling the money it spends on medical research.

“They know what’s going on. This is their moment to grab the reins of global science leadership and take it, and just like Dr Bernard said, you add in technology, AI and this is an exceptional moment,” Slotkin said. “But I always ask Americans: if the new wonder drug is developed and tested in China, do you feel comfortable with that? Do you feel comfortable ceding the newest developments and breakthroughs to another country?”

Slotkin added that it would be difficult to know what rigors those drugs or therapies went through to measure effectiveness and safety because they weren’t going through channels that ensure them here in the United States.

And, if the nation gets into a military or political conflict with China or its proxies, they could pull those lifesaving drugs, manufactured on their soil, from American or allied markets.

“I don’t like it when countries that have been adversarial with us have that power over us. So to me, not only am I worried about scientists going over to other countries, not coming to our universities; that brain drain,” Slotkin said. “I’m worried about them investing a lot in research, developing things that are important for global health, and then withholding them as punishment to the United States if they want.”

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