Gloria Echeverria, PhD
Feb 25, 2025
Note: These views are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my current employer, Baylor College of Medicine, my prior employer MD Anderson, nor of organizations who fund my research (CPRIT, NCI, American Cancer Society, Chimerix, Inc, and Mary Kay Ash Foundation).
I began my first faculty position as an Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in January 2020 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center in part supported by a METAvivor Early Career Investigator Award. My research is funded by NIH, American Cancer Society, CPRIT, and the Mary Kay Ash Foundation. My research is focused on breast cancer, specifically how aggressive triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) manage to evade the standard therapies patients receive. This is a critical area of research, as patients with TNBC have very limited treatment options and face poor prognoses.
As I write this message, we researchers are facing an urgent challenge: drastic cuts to academic research funding are being proposed and implemented with virtually no notice. Although these changers are being contested in court, these cuts are already causing detrimental disruptions for researchers and academic institutions that enable their research. Researchers and academic institutions are facing disruptive and detrimental uncertainty. Funding reductions are targeting ‘overhead’ or ‘indirect’ costs, but these funds are required for institutions to provide infrastructure essential for our research. As a result of these unplanned cuts, institutions across the USA are being forced to take precautionary actions such as hiring freezes, reduced graduate student admissions, and freezing of research funds. Furthermore, NIH grant review panels, called ‘study sections,’ are being postponed indefinitely, often with only 24 hours advanced notice. These chaotic and recklessly implemented cuts to funding and reviews are already causing unacceptable delays to lifesaving biomedical research.
Personally, I serve as a reviewer for an NCI study section which was scheduled for two all-day review sessions Thurs and Fri Feb 20-21 to discuss and review ~55 grant applications. Shockingly, the review meeting was abruptly ‘postponed until further notice’ a mere 24 hours prior to its start without explanation or attempt to reschedule. My panel is not unique – this happened to a total of 40 different panels across the NIH just that week alone (Feb 18-21, 2025). Each panel reviews ~100 grants and discusses about 50% of them at study section meetings. Thus roughly 2,000 grant review discussions were missed last week across the NIH.
This is devastating for researchers. My own grant application is scheduled to be reviewed later this week, as are hundreds of other grants, but none of us can be certain that this review will take place. In fact, review session cancellations are still being announced online one day at a time this week, providing reviewers and applicants no advanced notice that their work will be going to waste. Thus, we are sure to repeat the pattern of last week, indefinitely postponing a total of 56 study sections across the NIH this week alone (Feb 24-28), representing approximately 2,800 grants that will not get reviewed. Preparing grant applications requires many months of work and collaboration amongst many scientists. Rescheduling review meetings will require a monumental effort. This backlog of grants and delays and/or cuts to funding puts training students, performing experiments, and making progress for TNBC treatment behind schedule, stalling critical research that could save lives.
My own grant application falls in the category of ‘Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.’ My proposal aims to understand how a novel drug works in TNBC. Early versions of this drug have shown tremendous promise in clinical trials, being relatively non-toxic. My team’s research strongly suggests this drug can overcome resistance of TNBC to standard therapies. My grant is focused on generating essential preclinical data for a first-in-TNBC human clinical trial that we envision for the not distant future with the help of our breast medical oncologist collaborators. Delay of review of grants like mine, of which there are thousands, threatens and slows translation of biomedical research to help patients in the clinic.
Despite these challenges, I wish to conclude with a message of hope. If you walk into my lab right now, at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, February 25, it seems like any normal day. My team of talented postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, undergraduates, and research associates are hard at work conducting experiments, generating data, and analyzing results, thus pushing forward our understanding of breast cancer. We remain steadfast in our goal of tackling TNBC therapy resistance.
The future of any biomedical research lab like mine is in major jeopardy, so it is crucially important that all Americans are aware of this reality that will affect our futures, and the futures of generation to come.
Our breast cancer scientists remain as dedicated, determined, and tenacious as ever. We ask that all Americans and Congress Stand Up For Cancer, and all biomedical research, with us to support our critically important work, supported by the American people. Patients cannot afford these delays in scientific breakthroughs.
