Research operations have ceased at the Burke Neurological Institute (BNI) in White Plains, New York, The Transmitter has learned.
The BNI is “the only research institute in the U.S. dedicated to finding treatments to repair the brain and spinal cord,” according to its website. It is a nonprofit research institute affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine and supported by the Winifred Masterson Burke Foundation. It receives funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and grants from numerous private funding sources, including the Dana Foundation and Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, according to the BNI website. (It is not affiliated with the Burke Rehabilitation Hospital, which was purchased by Montefiore Health System in 2016.)
“The Winifred Masterson Burke Medical Research Institute, like many other research institutes, must support costs of operations that exceed the amount it receives in research grants. Our funding sources have not been sufficient to make up the funding gap and, as a result, we are currently evaluating all strategic options to address BNI’s financial challenges,” said BNI CEO and professor of neurology and neuroscience Rajiv Ratan, who is also professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine, in an email to The Transmitter.
Ratan, who declined to be interviewed, said that the last day of research operations was 22 May. A spokesperson for the BNI said in an emailed statement: “We continue seek strategic options and funding that may allow BNI to continue to employ its workforce and opportunities to look for strategic partners.” Ratan did not respond to follow-up emails; nor did a board member.
According to the BNI website, the institute has 10 labs, many of which focus on the basic neuroscience underpinning neurological conditions and recovery, including how cortical motor networks function after spinal cord injury, the neural circuits underlying visual perception, and how projections are formed from the cortex to the brainstem and different parts of the spinal cord during neurodevelopment. The institute employs 45 people in addition to the 10 principal investigators, according to the website.
“This is a tragedy. It is an institute that houses talented researchers who have been doing important work,” says Takaki Komoyama, professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. Komoyama is not affiliated with the institute but gave a talk at Burke on 7 April 2026.
Despite its relatively small size, the institute has been a model for a research approach to brain and spinal cord injury that could be “fundamentally focused on science, and yet still be so meaningful for what otherwise isn’t the most science-based clinical specialty,” says Tom Carmichael, professor and chair of neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.
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The institute’s 2024 tax filing showed that its net liabilities were nearly $5.9 million at the time. Its debt (more than $13 million in total at the end of 2024) included a $1.7 million loan from the Burke Foundation and more than $5 million in “accounts payable and accrued expenses,” according to the filing. These expenses could refer to unpaid vendors, says Thad Calabrese, professor of public and nonprofit financial management at New York University, who reviewed the institute’s tax documents for The Transmitter.
Nonprofit research shows that “a donor doesn’t want to pay to dig you out of a hole you got into in the past; they want to pay for what you’re going to do in the current or future periods,” Calabrese says.
Nearly two dozen scientists listed as BNI staff on its website did not respond to The Transmitter’s email requests for comment. It is unknown whether they will move their labs, or whether international postdoctoral researchers will find placements so they can keep their work visas.
One faculty member, Gary Gibson, has a clinical trial underway at 47 sites across the United States for a potential treatment to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The fate of that trial is unclear; the $45 million National Institutes of Health grant supporting the trial was awarded to the BNI. Gibson declined to comment. On 4 June 2026, after The Transmitter asked Ratan about the status of this trial, its status as reported on clinicaltrials.gov was changed from “recruiting” to “active, not recruiting.” The institute was also removed from the list of collaborators, and Weill Cornell Medicine was added.
In an email to The Transmitter, a Weill Cornell Medicine spokesperson said that the trial “will continue at Weill Cornell Medicine, and we are working closely with BNI and the NIH to transfer the trial. We are doing our best to minimize disruption to this ongoing study.”
The spokesperson also said that Weill Cornell Medicine was affiliated with the BNI “but not involved in the financial management or the closure of the institute. While we are saddened by the conclusion of a multi-year affiliation, our dedication to research in this important field remains unchanged.”
“It’s just a pretty terrible thing [that at] a place that was doing really great work, where the things that were coming out in terms of the science were exceptional, that the snowball of financial issues couldn’t have been dealt with earlier,” says a former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation. “I think that if two years ago there’d been a concerted effort to tighten the belt and do certain things, I think it wouldn’t have gotten to [this] point … And I think that’s the real tragedy here.”
