C&EN: "At Columbia University, chemical scientists are dismayed by funding cuts"

In this week's C&EN, this news (article by Aayushi Pratap): 

...About 40 blocks north of Columbia’s main campus is the university’s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, located in the Washington Heights neighborhood. It’s the research home of Barry Honig, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics who has spent over 4 decades as a researcher at Columbia studying protein interactions.

Honig was one of the collaborators on a project valued at over $1 million that lost its NIH grant. The group was investigating how proteins implicated in cancers interact with each other and the most effective ways to target them with drugs. “One day, the grant just didn't exist anymore—it is nothing like we have seen before,” he says. Columbia is currently in the process of negotiating the terms to restore the funding, he adds.

Honig says the research is fundamental to the field because scientists are only beginning to understand how proteins interact with each other. “We need this information to understand how drugs might bind to these proteins,” he says.

Looks like California is next. What a mess.