The NIH ordered me to stop my 'dangerous' gain-of-function research

Summary

On July 11, I received a letter from the National Institutes of Health ordering me to stop my research on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, because the work was deemed too “dangerous.” Surely this must be a mistake, I thought, since my lab has been operating safely for more than a decade. I am an associate professor of molecular and cell biology at University of California, Berkeley, where I study TB. I’m also a principal investigator on two grants from the NIH in which experiments using routine techniques were abruptly flagged as possible “dangerous gain-of-function research.” My work isn’t dangerous, but stopping research that could lead to cures could be. In wealthy countries, people think TB is a disease of the past. Advances in medicine and public health have virtually eradicated it from the U.S. and western Europe. Yet globally, TB kills more people than any other infectious disease and is also becoming more difficult to treat as drug resistance increases. If we lose the ability to treat TB with existing drugs, the whole world, including the United States, is at risk. Researchers in my lab and many others across the country are striving to perform research that is essential for the discovery of new drugs to eradicate TB and prevent its worldwide resurgence. The 2024-25 TB outbreak in Kansas City — more than 100 cases, making it the largest in the U.S. in decades — is a clear reminder that the risk is not just theoretical. Technically, my work on TB does involve gain of function, a category of research that has been both politicized and widely misunderstood. “Gain of function” is a broad category of research that involves genetically altering an organism to give it new abilities. Gain-of-function experiments have been crucial for increasing our understanding of bacteria like M. tuberculosis in the pursuit of discovering new treatments. These techniques have also been essential in developing new therapies for cancer, new vaccine...