Brooke Kajdy, a cancer patient from Canada, had been told that government funding issues meant she would not be able to take part in a clinical trial at NIH in Bethesda. But late Friday night, she learned her appeal to get the trial drugs sent to Canada has now been approved. News4’s Aimee Cho has the update.
A young mom battling stage 4 cancer says she was supposed to start a clinical trial at the National Institutes of Health in just a few weeks — but she was left in limbo after her doctors told her she could no longer take part in the trial due to funding issues.
But late Friday night, she breathed a sigh of relief: Her appeal to get the trial drugs sent to Canada has now been approved.
The Trump administration recently tried to change NIH’s funding policy, to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. It would have affected overhead costs, such as building maintenance and equipment. In response, a group of 22 states plus universities, hospitals, and research institutions are now suing. Just days ago, a federal judge in Boston sided with the states, and temporarily blocked the funding cuts.
But the cancer patient we spoke with said Friday she still didn't know what would happen next.
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Brooke Kajdy, who lives in Canada, was pregnant with her son when she was diagnosed with stage 4 B-cell lymphoma.
"Completely devastated because I was pregnant. And you know, I think when anyone hears the words like 'You have cancer,' it's just a slap in the face," Kajdy said.
She had to give birth early so she could begin her treatment. Her son went to the NICU and is now doing OK.
But as for Kajdy, she’s been undergoing treatment for nearly two years now without much success.
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"My disease is very, very stubborn," she said. "Obviously, it's terrifying. You know, you don't want to leave your kids behind. I'm a young mom. I have a husband. I don't want to leave my family behind. You know, I'm only 24. I have so much life left to live."
Kajdy said she was supposed to join a clinical trial called ViPOR at the NIH in Bethesda just a few weeks from now. But she says her medical team told her it's no longer an option due to NIH funding issues.
Though that federal judge in Boston blocked the funding cuts, residual confusion from the changing government guidance has left patients and researchers in limbo as organizations like the NIH try to interpret the latest guidelines.
"This research is just so important for people who, like me, have run out of options," Kajdy said. "Yeah, this is potentially life-saving, right?"
The scans of a different cancer patient show that person had large tumors (shown circled in red). After that patient participated in the ViPor trial, the tumors disappeared.
According to NIH researchers: "Many of these [ViPOR] patients who stopped responding to standard treatments would have otherwise died within a year, and now we have a good proportion who are still alive past two years, and some past four years."
News4 reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, to try to learn more about the status of the ViPOR trial and how many patients are being affected. We have not heard back.
Kajdy says she and her doctors are filing an appeal to try to get the ViPOR drugs sent to Canada.
"I'm waiting to see if it's been approved or not, which is scary in itself, right?" she said. "Like that someone could just approve or deny this for me. It's really crazy."
Last month, Elon Musk posted on X in support of the NIH spending cuts, calling some of the research overhead costs a "ripoff."
The federal judge who blocked the spending cuts said she did so because of the "imminent risk of halting life-saving clinical trials."
