NIH Announces Major Change in Funding Priorities

In line with its recently announced initiative to prioritize human-based research (see AWI Quarterly, summer 2025), the NIH announced in July that moving forward, all new calls for funding from the agency, known as notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs), that relate to animal experimentation must now also “support human-focused approaches such as clinical trials, real world data, or new approach methods (NAMs).” The NIH further emphasized that it “will no longer issue NOFOs exclusively supporting animal models.”

This marks an important symbolic shift in the agency’s funding priorities. While this announcement does not mean that the NIH will cease funding animal-only experiments, it does mean that the agency will no longer specifically seek out animal-only experiments in its funding calls, and indeed, the NIH says it may issue NOFOs that exclude proposals for experiments using animals.

Program Terms: Animals in Laboratories

AWI Quarterly Terms: Government/Legal, Quick Read