NIH to use part of its budget to pay for Department of Defense research

The NIH will move part of its 2026 NIAID budget, funded at $6.6 billion, to the Department of Defense for advanced development of medical countermeasures against pandemic influenza, CBRN threats, and emerging infectious diseases. The decade-long agreement, signed a month ago, will allocate roughly 10% of the DoD’s budget, far below the agency’s request for up to one-third, and comes as the NIH struggles to issue enough grants from its congressional allocation.