Pennsylvania cancer survivors, doctors say proposed cuts to federal research dollars could set back breakthroughs

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Cancer survivors, doctors and advocates in Pennsylvania say proposed cuts to federal funding for laboratories and research on cancer treatments and therapies could delay future breakthroughs.

Supporters and members of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network are now calling on Congress to preserve funding in the next fiscal year budget and reject the Trump administration’s proposal of slashing $2.7 billion from the National Cancer Institute.

“Because everybody is at risk of getting cancer,” said William Sherman, the network’s managing director of advocacy for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

The cancer institute cuts are part of the administration’s larger proposal to reduce funding for the National Institutes of Health by about 40%.

Pennsylvania scientists, companies and institutions received more than $2 billion from the NIH in fiscal year 2024, according to the American Cancer Society, including about $319 million from the cancer institute.

Efforts to find better and new treatments for cancer has, for the most part, been a universally supported endeavor, Sherman said, a nonpartisan issue.

Until now.

“I’ve never met an elected official who tells me no to my face,” Sherman said, referring to gathering support in Washington, D.C. for research efforts. “But we know by their voting behaviors that not everybody is with us right now. And they need to be.”

A rally in Philadelphia

Cancer advocates and survivors came from across the state to meet outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning to raise awareness about the funding cuts and encourage residents to call their representatives in Congress.

They waved signs with messages like, “Every Cancer Cure Starts With Federally Funded Research” and “Enable Cancer Cures Of Tomorrow By Protecting Cancer Research Today.”

City resident Michael Hu, 47, stood among the protesters. He wore a T-shirt that showed a chemical structure of a molecule and the words, “more research = more life.” He called the federal funding cuts “bewildering.”

“It just doesn’t seem to make any sense,” Hu said.

The husband and father of two boys was first diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer three years ago. Newer treatments that target cancer-causing genetic mutations have kept him alive.

“My cancer went from everywhere in my body down to just a spot in my liver in a period of months all by taking a pill at home,” he said. “It was amazing that we can even do that.”

But the disease has come back three times. As Hu and his treatment team at Penn Medicine look to other kinds of therapies and experimental trials, he said federal funding cuts could one day have a devastating effect on families like his.

“You’re always trying to look for as much hope to hold onto, especially if you’ve been progressing through a lot of different therapies probably faster than you’d like, like myself,” he said. “And just to hear of potential cuts to what can potentially save me … it’s like feeling the hope being torn from my grasp when I’m just struggling to hold onto it.”

The issue goes beyond delays in treatment advancements, said Dr. Anthonise Fields, a Pennsylvania microbiologist, researcher and CEO of E3 NexHealth.

Fewer research grants means fewer jobs and opportunities for trainees and broader economic losses for cities and communities like Philadelphia, she said, which has become a destination for scientific and medical research.

“That attracts people to Pennsylvania, it attracts people to Philadelphia, and that’s economic growth,” she said. “It’s really important that we fuel what is going to fuel the growth and not take a short-term solution.”

Budget negotiations are ongoing in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and funding for cancer research is still on the table.

Last month, the Senate Committee on Appropriations voted with bipartisan support to sustain funding for the NIH and cancer research. The committee’s draft bill specifically proposed allocating $7.4 billion for the National Cancer Institute.

In a break from the Trump administration’s proposal, Republican committee leaders said the sustained funding included in the draft bill prioritized “lifesaving biomedical research” for diseases like cancer.