The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the Trump administration, has recently proposed terminating funding for a wide range of HIV vaccine research projects.

The HHS directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not to issue any new funding for HIV vaccine research in the upcoming fiscal year, with only a few limited exceptions.

Notifications that the funding would not be extended were relayed Friday to researchers, who were told by National Institutes of Health officials that the Department of Health and Human Services had elected “to go with currently available approaches to eliminate HIV” instead.

The cuts will shutter two major HIV vaccine research efforts that were first funded by the NIH in 2012 at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and the Scripps Research Institute, multiple scientists said. A spokesperson for Moderna said the vaccine manufacturer’s clinical trials through the NIH’s HIV Vaccine Trials Network have also been put on pause...