Promising TNBC Drug Now in Limbo Thanks to NIH Freeze

The path to a new cancer drug can be long, winding, and expensive — and the federal government pays for a lot of it. One study found that, of the 356 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2010 and 2019, federal funding contributed to research for all but two of them.

Most federal research funding comes by way of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), so the restrictions that the Trump administration has placed on the agency — freezing grant funding, removing health information from agency databases, and firing of more than 1,500 NIH employees, among other things — have serious consequences for researchers.

Gloria Echeverria, PhD, is one of those researchers. Her work on a potential new drug for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is funded in part by the NIH — and now looks to be on hold indefinitely.   

Echeverria spoke with Breastcancer.org about how recent changes at the NIH could slow the development of new life-saving drugs and how she and her team are trying to move forward.  

Tell us a little bit about your background.

I started studying triple-negative breast cancer as a postdoctoral fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center. [Up to 15% of breast cancers are TNBC — a cancer that tends to be harder to treat and more likely to come back than other breast cancers.] Part of my research there looked at how TNBC tumors were able to survive chemo. In 2020, I started my own lab at Baylor College of Medicine. 

What do you study?

My lab studies chemoresistance — we want to answer the question: What’s allowing some TNBC cells to evade chemo? We use different experimental models — tumor cells in dishes, animal models, and genomic data from tumors of people with TNBC — to help us answer this question. 

People with TNBC who continue to have cancer after chemo tend to have worse outcomes. We’re trying to fix this.

What was the recent project you proposed to the NIH?

Our lab, along with a few other research teams, submitted a grant application for funding to gather data to understand a promising new TNBC drug. This is a drug that’s already in a phase I clinical trial for treating central nervous system tumors. People taking the drug seem to tolerate it well without major side effects. We believe this drug could help people who have TNBC [whose tumors] are resistant to other chemotherapies. 

We know from our research that the drug doesn’t work well in all people with triple-negative breast cancer, but it can work very well against some TNBC tumors. The grant would allow us to use molecular science to learn more about how the drug works in TNBC. This information would help us to determine the TNBC patients that would be the best candidates for the drug.

We have a team of experts in place to conduct this research and carry out a clinical trial in the foreseeable future. We asked for $2.5 million in direct costs over five years. This project can’t happen without this money to fund research supplies, drugs, and the staff doing the work.

So this research could result in a new treatment option for people with TNBC.  

Yes, with a grant like this, I really believe we could be on to a new drug to treat TNBC. 

What happened after the Trump administration’s changes to the NIH? 

I’ve never experienced anything like this. Everyone is worried. From February 18 to 21, 40 different NIH study sections that were looking at around 2,000 grants were postponed. [Study sections are meetings of experts who help the NIH determine the most promising grant proposals for funding.] These meetings also didn’t happen the last week of February, when my grant proposal was scheduled for discussion. 

Earlier this month [March], I received an email from NIH saying that the study section to discuss my grant will now take place in April. But NIH council meetings [are also] on hold. [In NIH council meetings, another group of experts reviews the top-scoring grants from study sections and decides which of them will receive funding.] 

As of today, top-scoring grants that were reviewed back in October 2024 have still not been evaluated by the council, so they still haven’t been awarded funds. There’s no information about when council meetings may start back up, so no new NIH grants are being funded. 

How does this affect your research long-term?

This backlog of grants, funding delays, and proposed cuts will put advances in TNBC treatment behind schedule. It’ll stall critical research that could save lives. The uncertainty is paralyzing.

What gives you hope?

I’m fortunate to be able to fund the current projects in my lab, and I have a wonderful lab team that remains intact. I told my team that nothing that happens will ever make our work unimportant or not needed. 

If you walk in my lab right now, nothing is different yet. People are working like crazy because scientists love their work. They’re doing their experiments, gathering data — all with the goal of helping people with TNBC. We’re hopeful we can continue making scientific progress. 

What can people do to raise awareness?

A lot of people don’t realize the reality of what cuts to government funding of research can mean. Talk with people who aren’t in your echo chamber, people in your friend group who don’t understand what’s happening to research. Spread the word that if these delays continue, our progress in treating breast cancer will slow. I don’t think anyone in the community wants that to happen. 

Contact your representative in the county in which you’re registered to vote and tell them why they should care about this. 

It’s going to take this groundswell of people in the community to force change. As scientists, we need advocates. We need you. 

Note: Echeverria’s responses are her own and do not necessarily represent those of her current employer, Baylor College of Medicine, nor of organizations that fund her research. Her responses were condensed and edited for clarity.