Fluctuations in external funding priorities influence research programs in the region. The termination of American aid in 2025 may have weakened some programs, without demonstrating by itself a general shift in scientific priorities. Clinical research requests submitted to Anvisa increased by 11% between 2024 and 2025, but Anvisa indicates that this increase cannot be attributed to the 2024 reform, which nonetheless demonstrates that regulatory action can transform a country’s attractiveness.
The Essentials
- Latin American public health research receives external funding, which raises questions about scientific priorities.
- The contraction of American federal funds in 2025-2026 affected certain areas of regional research.
- Brazil reformed its regulatory framework for clinical trials by accelerating approvals, showing that a national lever can modify a country’s attractiveness to pharmaceutical laboratories.
- The European Union and the EU-CELAC partnership offer alternative financing, but remain largely structured by projects rather than by sustainable institutional capacities.
- The challenge for the coming decade is whether Latin America will build its own research agendas or fill an American deficit without reducing its structural dependence.
Dependence on External Funding and Its Effects on the Scientific Agenda
The figure is precise and its logic is inexorable. Substantial external funding can influence the orientation of research subjects, collaborations, and publication timelines. External funding can direct research priorities from their very formulation.
Sources examine the role of external funding in regional research. Latin America has had a lasting relationship with American funds—NIH, USAID, CDC Foundation—based on apparently rational logic: where national capacities were lacking, external funding filled the gap. Programs for epidemiological surveillance, studies on Chagas disease, dengue, leishmaniasis, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis were launched, funded, and published. Science advanced.
But it advanced on the rails laid by Washington. Calls for proposals define the themes. Reviewers designated by funders assess relevance. Publications in English-language journals indexed by American institutions define what counts as legitimate knowledge. This mechanism works well as long as the funder’s priorities and regional needs overlap.
It reveals its fragility the moment priorities diverge.
The American Contraction of 2025-2026 and Its Visible Effects
The Trump administration’s shift on federal funding for international research produced a shock of varying magnitude depending on countries and disciplines, but decisions included massive freezes, suspensions, and terminations, though not uniformly directed at all programs, with some suspensions being lifted on March 19, 2025. In Latin America, certain programs suffered interruptions.
Sources document cases of impact: patient cohorts in follow-up whose protocols were affected, researchers whose international mobility grants were interrupted, institutional collaborations between American universities and regional research centers disrupted. For Latin American institutions, the immediate problem is also structural: programs defined by external priorities stop, while the diseases in question persist.
What this shock reveals goes further than accounting. A research system dependent on external funding may encounter difficulties in defining autonomous priorities. National science funding agencies exist in the region, but their resources are often limited. The result: withdrawal of a funder can leave a deficit difficult to replace quickly, without implying the complete absence of regional or national funding.
The ISC emphasizes the fragilities of funding and recommends stable, diversified mechanisms aligned with national and regional priorities. It shapes doctoral training, peer networks, databases to which researchers have access, conferences where results are presented. Deconstructing this dependence takes time precisely because it is inscribed in institutions, not merely in accounts.
Brazil Proves That the National Lever Works
Brazil’s trajectory in clinical trials offers a concrete counterpoint. Between 2024 and 2025, clinical research requests submitted to Anvisa increased by 11%, reflecting growing interest from pharmaceutical laboratories in conducting trials in Brazil. This dynamic produces direct spillovers for university hospitals and strengthens the negotiating position with international pharmaceutical firms seeking recruitment sites.
This increase coincides with the simplification and acceleration of clinical trial authorization procedures by ANVISA, Brazil’s health surveillance agency, although the 2024 regulatory reform modified approval timelines, its direct impact on this increase cannot be entirely isolated. The reform modified approval timelines. Pharmaceutical firms followed the institutional decision: Brazil became more attractive, and trials flowed in.
This mechanism deserves to be read clearly. The capacity was there—university hospitals, patient populations, trained medical teams. What was lacking was the political decision to remove a regulatory obstacle. A regulatory action can modify the conditions for hosting international research activities. Other countries in the region—Colombia, Mexico, Argentina—have comparable infrastructure and similar reform margins.
The Brazilian case describes a path, not an exception.
This context joins a broader dynamic observable across the continent: Latin America is beginning to weigh in the global digital knowledge economy, notably in AI model training. In both cases, the challenge is to transform real human capacity into a sustainable institutional position, rather than into subcontracting for agendas defined elsewhere.
European Alternatives: Real Promises, Insufficient Structure
The European Union has intensified its commitments to research in Latin America within the EU-CELAC partnership framework. The action plan published in 2023-2024 includes dedicated components on health, climate, and digital transition. Horizon Europe funding has been opened to Latin American institutions through specific calls.
It is better than nothing, and in certain areas—research on Amazonian biodiversity, zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance—collaborations are substantial. But the structure of European funding reproduces in part the same constraints as American funding. Calls for proposals are defined in Brussels. Consortiums are often led by European institutions. Latin American partners participate, but on themes and formats defined beforehand.
The ISC emphasizes that stable and long-term funding contributes to the strengthening of institutional capacities. What would be needed in the end is funding for institutions themselves—national research agencies, public universities, evaluation systems—rather than funding for specific projects defined according to external criteria.
The distinction is not trivial. Funding a project on dengue allows for the production of science on dengue. Funding a national public health research agency allows that agency to decide that dengue deserves ten times more attention than the external funder had estimated, or that another subject, invisible in European calls, is a priority for the region.
The Conditions for Autonomy That Is Not a Retreat
Scientific autonomy is often presented as an ideal that comes at a cost: less funding, fewer international collaborations, fewer publications in major journals. This reading is incorrect, and it often serves to justify inaction.
Working examples follow a common logic. Brazil modified its regulatory framework for clinical trials according to 2025 data. South Korea and Taiwan built competitive scientific systems by massively funding their institutions and defining their own industrial and health priorities. Singapore applied the same approach in biotechnologies. In all these cases, autonomy enabled negotiation of equal partnerships.
For Latin America, the levers are identifiable. Total R&D spending relative to GDP is low in many Latin American and Caribbean countries, but this does not directly measure national agency budgets; in 2015, the Latin American region devoted approximately 0.75% of GDP to R&D according to data cited by the OECD, a level lower than that of the OECD in 2023, which reached approximately 2.7%. Increasing these budgets, simplifying regulations to attract clinical trials and industrial collaborations, creating regional funding mechanisms—the Inter-American Development Bank has existing instruments that could be directed to this end—are decisions that do not await an external funder to be implemented.
The risk of the present moment would be to treat American withdrawal as a crisis to be managed by seeking other external funding, rather than as an opportunity to reconfigure the relationship with dependence. Substituting one external funder for another without strengthening national institutions risks perpetuating a form of dependence.
Indicators to Monitor by 2030
In four years, several indicators will allow measurement of the follow-up given to the 2025-2026 crisis. These will include whether the share of external funding in regional research has decreased, whether national agencies have strengthened their capacity to define their own priorities, and whether Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico have adopted reforms comparable to Brazil’s on clinical trials.
External funding enabled Latin American research to develop in certain areas. The 2025 American funding shock may make activities dependent on these funds vulnerable, without establishing by itself the external origin of regional scientific priorities.
The capacity is there. Medical teams, universities, hospital infrastructure, biologists and epidemiologists trained in the world’s best universities exist. What is still lacking in some countries in the region is the political decision to fund local research agendas and chosen collaborations.
Sources
- Lancet Regional Health Americas, February 2026, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00041-4/fulltext
- Science AAAS, June 2026, “Latin American research autonomy assessment” (Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science)
- International Science Council, March 2026, “Science funding dependencies and regional research capacity” (report, International Science Council)
