For James Antaki, professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University, the Government subsidy of $ 6.7 million meant that babies would be saved. Granted by the Department of Defense on March 30, it would allow its Cornell team to increase the production and tests of Pediflow, a device that increases blood flow in babies with heart defects.
A week later, all that changed.
The Department of Defense sent to Antaki a stop order on April 8 informing him that his team would not get the money, destined to be distributed for four years. Three decades of research are now at risk, and Antaki said he has no idea why the government cut off the funds.
“I feel it is my call in life to complete this project,” he said on Friday, in his first news interview since he lost funds. “Once a week, I spend this mental process of ‘Is it time to surrender?’ But it is not my prerogative to give up. “
Neither the Department of Defense nor the White House Press Office responded to the requests for comments.
Antaki is one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of academics from all over the country who have lost funds in a variety of fields since President Donald Trump reached his charge, due to a combination of new executive orders that limit what government money can support and cancellations of radical subsidies ordered by the Elon Musk government efficiency department.
One in 100 babies in the US. Throughout the world, it is estimated that 240,000 babies die in their first 28 days due to congenital birth defects.
The heart of a baby is the size of a great nut. When a baby is born with a hole between the hearts of the heart, it can be a potentially deadly condition. The creation of Antaki is a device for the size of an AA battery that uses a rotating propeller in magnets to increase blood flow, helping them to survive surgery or live at home with your family until there is a donor heart available, if necessary.
The new financing round that Antaki expected would have supported more prototype tests, including placement in an animal to ensure that it does not harm humans, and the completion of the paperwork of paperwork necessary to advance through the regulatory process of the Food and Drug Administration.
The device has received several subsidies throughout the years of the National Health Institutes and the Department of Defense without problems, said Antaki.
Antaki began working in technology in 2003. He was already developing a similar technology for adults at the University of Pittsburgh when the National Health Institutes issued a call to proposals in a pediatric heart assistance system.
I had already tried, without success, interest private companies in a pediatric device. They may have decreased, speculates, because the market is smaller for children’s medical devices than for adults.
After Antaki arrived in Cornell in 2018, he obtained research funds from the Department of Defense to maintain the project in the future. He presented a proposal of 300 pages last June for the next cash infusion he needed, and the Defense Department notified his team in March that he was approved, before reversing the course in April, he said.
A copy of the stop order, reviewed by NBC News, does not specify a reason why the Government canceled the subsidy beyond that was “to the Directorate of the Administration.”
Dr. Evan Zahn, a pediatric interventionist cardiologist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, which is not involved with Pediflow, said that cutting funds for Antaki research is a step back for children’s medical care because there are few commercially available solutions for babies with heart defects.
“The technology specifically designed for our children, particularly babies in all areas, is desperately necessary, so losing funds for something like that is a real loss,” Zahn said.
If the financing is not restored within 90 days, said Antaki, he and his team must begin to fire the laboratory staff and Ph.D. Students will have to change their research approach.
In the great scheme of what the government finances, he said: “It is a small amount of money that could do so much good for so many people, and it is the right thing. Simply speak for itself.”
