Funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could sharply reduce the number of new drugs available to Americans in the coming decades, according to an analysis released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office.

The Trump administration has proposed shrinking the budget of the NIH, the world’s premier funder of medical research. But even a 10% reduction would prevent roughly 30 additional drugs from coming to market in the next three decades, the budget office said.

The budget office also assessed a hypothetical scenario in which staffing reductions at the FDA would delay the review of new drugs by nine months. Such delays would prevent 23 additional drugs from becoming available in that time period, according to the analysis.

About 3,500 FDA workers have been laid off by the Trump administration or have left voluntarily in recent months.

The cuts come at a time of rapid innovation in gene therapies and in targeting rare diseases, said Rena Conti, who directs the Technology Policy and Research Institute at Boston University.

— The New York Times