Overview

• The analysis re-ran NIH funding priorities from 1980–2007 under a hypothetical 40% smaller budget to flag “at-risk” grants.
• Of 557 FDA-approved small-molecule drugs from 2000–2023, 59.4% cited NIH-funded work and 51.4% referenced research tied to at-risk grants.
• Only 7.1% of the drugs directly acknowledged NIH support in patents, including 2.5% that specified at-risk grants via government interest statements.
• Authors caution that the study excludes biologics, vaccines, diagnostics and devices, assumes equal cuts across all NIH institutes, and that citations do not pinpoint which specific drugs would have been lost.
• The findings land as the administration proposes roughly a 39.3% NIH reduction for FY2026, a move that faces ongoing debate in Congress.