UMass Chan Medical School lays off or furloughs about 200 employees after NIH funding shortfall

UMass Chan Medical School has laid off or furloughed an estimated 200 employees, a spokesperson said Wednesday.UMass Chan Medical School

UMass Chan Medical School has laid off or furloughed an estimated 200 employees, a spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.

The cuts come after the school saw a $30 million funding shortfall from long delays in funding new research grants from the National Institutes of Health after President Trump took office in January, said Sarah Willey, the UMass Chan spokesperson.

UMass Chan received $193 million from the NIH last year, Willey said, and is preparing for uncertain federal funding in the coming year. Under the Trump administration’s proposed caps on indirect NIH funding, the school projects a $50 million loss in funding.

The school has also paused faculty recruitment and significantly reduced the incoming class size of the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. All hiring and discretionary spending has also been paused, the spokesperson said.

During a Tuesday visit to the school, which employs 6,000 people and contributes more than $2 billion annually to the economy, Governor Maura Healey highlighted the dangers of lost and unstable funding on the state’s only public medical school.

“The funding cuts are very extensive, including supporting critical work in gene therapy, rare disease research, HIV research, digital medicine, neuroscience and more,” Healey said. “UMass Chan has held groundbreaking clinical trials of new genetic therapies for devastating conditions like ALS and so many other diseases.

“But this kind of progress is now at risk, and with that, hope is being stripped away from patients and families.”