Harvard University Professor Alberto Ascherio's research is literally frozen.

The epidemiology and nutrition scientist has thousands of blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university's school of public health. Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions of taxpayer dollars, the samples are key to his research to discover the cure to multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Ascherio is one of hundreds of Harvard researchers who have fallen victim to the freeze on funding by the Trump administration.

The halt in federal funding has meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers exploring everything from opioid addiction to how diseases like cancer progress are laying off young researchers and shelving years or even decades of research. Some research might be lost forever.

The funding cuts are part of a months-long battle that the Trump administration has waged against some the country's top universities including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern universities. It has taken a particular hard and aggressive line against Harvard, freezing the funding after one of the country's oldest universities rejected a series of demands in an April 11 letter from a federal antisemitism task force.

The letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. It was meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment on campus.

Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it laid out the reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

The Trump administration denies the cuts were done in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the April demand letter was sent. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel contracts for policy reasons.

The fundings cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of shock and feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to layoff their staffs of young researchers, shutter labs or scramble to find nongovernment funding to replace the lost funding.