NIH to bar its K23 career award from funding trainees' own clinical trials

Starting in July 2027, the NIH will stop letting its K23 award — the Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award, a longtime on-ramp for early-career physician-scientists — pay for clinical trials run by the awardees themselves. Recipients can still gain trial experience by working on a study led by their mentor, but funding an independent trial will require money from elsewhere at NIH, or from foundations and other outside sources. The agency frames the move as realigning K awards with what it calls their core purpose: career development rather than research funding.

To fill the gap, NIH is soliciting feedback on replacement mechanisms aimed at training “scientists who can lead rigorous clinical trials.” Two options are on the table: a dedicated clinical-research grant paired with a K award that would continue covering the trainee’s salary and mentoring, or a two-stage award that splits a mentored phase from a subsequent research-grant phase. Both are pitched as enabling new investigators to run studies with more complexity, rigor, and statistical power than the current K23 supports.

The change lands amid skepticism. Some NIH observers argue that stripping clinical-trial funding from K awards is a mistake, warning it could disrupt a well-worn pipeline that has helped budding clinical researchers move toward independence — at a moment when the future support structure is still only a request for comment.