This 4-year-old's heart is failing. A federal grant that might help him was canceled

toggle caption Elissa Nadworny/NPR

The device is about the size of a AA battery, and it has the potential to help a baby or infant heart keep beating in the face of failure.

It's called the PediaFlow, an implantable artificial heart for the littlest, most vulnerable humans. James Antaki, a biomedical engineer at Cornell University in New York, has been developing this medical device for the last two decades.

As of last spring, it was in the final stages of research and manufacturing before clinical trials, funded by a $6 million, multiyear grant from the Department of Defense.

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"There is so much potential in this," says Antaki, who keeps a prototype of the device in his pocket, like a security blanket. "It's so close to being used to save lives in children."

About 1 in 100 children in the U.S. is born with a congenital heart defect. But for babies or young kids with the most serious ailments, there is no artificial heart specifically designed for them. The Food and Drug Administration has identified this as an area of critical medical device need.

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But in April, the Trump administration canceled Antaki's federal grant as part of a sweeping punishment of elite colleges and universities for wha