Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo was already dealing with cuts of millions of federal dollars because of the sequester and now it potentially faces a loss of millions more with the government shutdown.
Roswell Park president and CEO Dr. Donald Trump also conducts research and sees patients.
Thursday he spoke with a long-term prostate cancer patient who was slated to go to Washington to be examined at the National Institutes of Health for admission to a clinical trial of a new treatment. But with the federal government shut down, the NIH is also closed and the patient is shutout.
The why in which the NIH shutdown will affect us is two-fold; if it last long enough where dollars cease to flow, then we will have to back fill the infrastructure support," said Dr. Trump.
So far, that hasn't hit Roswell too hard, but Dr. Trump said it's a cumulative issue, shuddering the NIH and stopping work on further grants.
"Something that has happened that will have an impact downstream is that the whole grant review process at the NIH has been shutdown," said Dr. Drump.
Trump said this slows scientific progress and the longer the shutdown exists, the slower it will be.
"And, when you pile that on top of Sequestration which clearly slows down progress since it takes away money to support real research, I think you begin to have an impact on real people and real progress," said Dr. Trump.
If the NIH and the National Cancer Institute continue to be shutdown, Dr. Trump said Roswell Park will have to use its own resources to continue programs until Washington starts up again.
Dr. Trump noted Roswell is continuing to hire new people and support researchers between grants to move work along.
