Frances Carr, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the Larner College of Medicine, spent years studying how thyroid hormones and their receptors regulate normal development and impact cancer growth.

Work by Dr. Carr and others established that one of the receptors, thyroid hormone receptor beta (TRβ), acts as a tumor suppressor in several cancers. Carr’s team went a step further, showing that selectively activating TRβ with a synthetic hormone accelerates the effect and reduces tumor growth. The implications were striking: a nontoxic hormone therapy that could help overcome treatment resistance while boosting the effectiveness of standard‑of‑care drugs.

“This was the door opening,” Carr says. “Success with anaplastic thyroid cancer—one of the most aggressive cancers—was just the first step. We discovered we could repurpose it for other cancer types, including aggressive breast cancers.”

a person sitting at a desk in an office looking at a computer
Frances Carr, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at the Larner College of Medicine, in her office (Photo: Andy Duback)

Then came the harder question: How do we make it happen?

There’s no straight path from bench science to the clinic. Developing new therapies takes a community of support, and Carr credits the UVM Cancer Center (UVMCC) and the broader UVM community for building momentum behind the discovery. Key elements include:

  • A $50,000 UVMCC Pilot Grant that enabled Carr and her collaborator Seth Frietze, Ph.D., professor of biomedical and health sciences in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, to generate the critical preclinical data needed to move forward. That led to a $1.5 million Department of Defense Impact Award in 2024 to advance their work toward commercialization.
  • An entrepreneurial partnership with UVM alum and entrepreneur Steve Arms. After learning about the research, Arms urged Carr to form a company and committed as an investor. In 2025, Carr founded TRBeta Oncology LLC (TRBO), with Arms serving as interim CEO.
  • The educational‑professional arc of Noelle Gillis, Ph.D., who joined Carr’s lab as a an undergraduate trainee in 2014 and received her Ph.D. in UVM’s Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, eventually earning UVM’s first prestigious F99 award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). After Dr. Gillis completed a postdoc in Minnesota, Carr recruited her back to UVM, where she is now on a faculty track in the Department of Pharmacology and serves as VP for scientific development at TRBO.
  • UVMCC members who have served as sounding boards, advisors, and collaborators—especially Brian Cunniff, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine (TRBO’s scientific advisor); and clinical collaborators Mirabelle Sajisevi, M.D., associate professor of surgery (DOD grant collaborator), and Michelle Sowden, D.O. (American Cancer Society Discovery Boost Award–breast cancer).
  • UVMCC’s Cancer Research, Training, and Education Program (CRTEC), which supports early‑career scientists in member labs. One is Jaime Boisoneau, a graduate student in Carr’s lab who received a 2024 CRTEC Fellowship to continue her work through the summer.

The TRβ project also drew on broader campus and regional resources to help Carr navigate next steps:

  • UVM’s Office of Innovations supported patent protection for the discovery and related inventions. Corine Farewell, D.V.M., M.B.A., director of UVM Innovations (formally the Office of Technology Commercialization), and Brent Osborne, Ph.D., business development and technology licensing officer of UVM Innovations, also facilitated start-up support by connecting the team to such programs as the NSF I-Corps program.
  • The Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, led by Kirk Dombrowski, Ph.D., facilitated a research agreement between UVM and TRBO, enabling Carr to advance TRβ agonists toward clinical development.
  • The BioLabs Innovation Center at UVM connected Carr with mentors through its Innovator Mentor Connect program, leading to a collaboration with a pharmaceutical expert who is designing TRβ agonist molecules. BioLabs Director James Stafford, Ph.D., played a key role in identifying opportunites for TRBO to connect with organizations and companies that can advance the work toward FDA approval and clinical trials.
  • The Northern New England Clinical & Translational Research Network awarded Carr and Frietze a grant to expand research into aggressive breast cancers, which led to an American Cancer Society Discovery Boost Award.