NIH grant cuts will axe clinical trials abroad — and could leave thousands without care

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Tuesday 3 June 2025

Hello Nature readers,
Today we learn that US grant cuts will abruptly end clinical trials abroad, learn that an mpox outbreak is overwhelming Sierra Leone’s health system and ponder whether a Neanderthal booped a rock to make it look more like a face.

A short clip from a video of an individual with Parkinson’s disease using the diagnostic pen for a writing task, with data being recorded on computer screens.

Writing with this pen could help people affected by Parkinson’s disease to be diagnosed at an early stage, which would help them to access treatment sooner. (Guorui Chen et al./Nature Chemical Engineering)

Smart pen could spot Parkinson’s tremors

A 3D-printed pen filled with magnetic ink could help to spot the hallmark tremors of Parkinson’s disease. The pen’s movement on a surface generates a voltage in a metal coil, which is recorded as a current signal. In a small trial, researchers used machine learning models to compare signals generated by people with Parkinson’s with those produced by people without the disease. After some training, one model could identify people with Parkinson’s with an average accuracy of more than 96%.

The Guardian | 5 min read
Reference: Nature Chemical Engineering paper

Bots wreak havoc on academic websites

A spike in bot traffic is putting pressure on the websites that host journal papers, databases and other online resources. BMJ’s chief technology officer, Ian Mulvany, reported in March that “bot traffic on our journal websites has now surpassed real user traffic”. Some site owners suspect these automated programs are gathering data to train artificial-intelligence tools. The sheer volume of bot requests could jeopardize smaller ventures without the resources to put in safeguards, says zoologist Michael Orr.

Nature | 6 min read

Mpox outbreak overwhelms Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone now accounts for three-quarters of all new mpox cases in Africa, and its health system is overwhelmed. The outbreak is driven by the variant called clade IIb, but is showing features previously associated with a different strain, clade Ib — namely an explosive spread among both men and women, rather than primarily among men who have sex with men. This suggests that clade IIb could have become more transmissible, or that the two variants are more similar than was thought. In the meantime, Sierra Leone doesn’t have enough of the vaccine doses needed to get the outbreak under control.

Science | 6 min read

Trump’s impact extends beyond US borders

Award freeze puts clinical trials in peril

In May, the US National Institutes of Health announced a policy that bans ‘foreign subawards’ — funds that a US grant recipient can give to an international collaborator. The move will abruptly freeze funding for dozens, if not hundreds, of ongoing trials of experimental drugs and treatments around the world. The policy endangers people who might suddenly find themselves without care, scientists say. And it is a waste of taxpayers’ money, says behavioural scientist Amy Conroy, one of nine affected researchers who spoke to Nature. “They will never know the results of this study that they’ve paid for,” she says.

Nature | 6 min read

Canadian research reels from Trump cuts

President Donald Trump’s cuts to US research funding are taking a toll on researchers in Canada, where many work closely with US scientists on US-funded projects. “Every time I get on a Zoom call there is another person crying,” says landscape ecologist Jeff Cardille. “Every meeting feels like a funeral for our careers.” Cuts have also put at risk the data that underpin weather-forecasting and disaster-management systems. “The loss of that data will be very detrimental to not only researchers but everyday Canadians as well,” says biochemist Sarah Laframboise, who advocates for the role of science in policymaking.

Nature | 9 min read

Image of the week

A granite pebble, about 21 cm tall and 8 cm wide, has indents that sort of look like eyes and a mouth, and a fingertip-sized dot in the centre.

A close examination of the red ochre dot on this stone, unearthed from the San Lázaro rock-shelter in Spain, revealed that the mark was made by a human finger. This raises the tantalizing prospect that a Neanderthal maybe, just maybe, meant the dot to represent a nose (the rock, say researchers, does indeed look like a face in person). “It could represent one of the earliest human facial symbolizations in Prehistory,” write the team that made the discovery. (BBC | 4 min read)
Reference: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences paper (David Álvarez-Alonso et al./Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (CC BY 4.0))

Quote of the day

“My treasured memories, I’ve learned, are all subsidized by a massive Fish Industrial Complex — one that has taken a toll on all sorts of insects, invertebrates, frogs, and salamanders.”

Fishing cemented writer Alex Brown’s passion for the wilderness. Joining a mission to stock a lake in a national park with hatchery-grown trout prompted him to reassess the relationship between fieldsports and conservation in the United States. (Longreads | 16 min read)

Have you benefited from an exceptional mentor — or are you or a colleague supporting early-career researchers in their career development? Nominations are now open for the Nature Awards for Mentoring in Science 2025. This year, the focus is on mentors in the United Kingdom, and there are awards for lifetime achievement and for mid-career mentors. Each award comes with a cash prize of US$10,000. Find out more here.

Thanks for reading,
Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing
With contributions by Jacob Smith

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