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The Potti Scandal: Biostatisticians Send Letter to Varmus, Lancet Oncology Expresses Concern
From The Cancer Letter, July 23, 2010:
Updates in the scandal over Duke University scientist Anil Potti's falsification of his credentials:
—Thirty-three biostatisiticans sent a letter to NCI Director Harold Varmus asking NCI to investigate Potti's scientific work.
—The Lancet Oncology issued an "Expression of Concern" regarding a key paper by Potti.
—Duke University suspended Potti and for the second time stopped enrolling patients into three single-institution trials that used his genomic technology to assign patients to chemotherapy.
—American Cancer Society Chief Medical Officer Otis Brawley wrote to Duke University informing that payments on Potti's grant from the society have been suspended.
For the rest of the story, download The Cancer Letter's second special issue on The Potti Scandal.
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Note to Cancer Letter Subscribers for Friday, July 23
The first email you received today was a mistake. We were trying to send The Clinical Cancer Letter to its subscribers and sent it to Cancer Letter subscribers inadvertently. We are sorry to cause confusion when you couldn't open the link. Do not fret. You will receive another email a little later today with the correct link to today's issue of The Cancer Letter. Stay tuned!
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Prominent Duke Scientist Claimed Prizes He Didn't Win, Including Rhodes Scholarship
From The Cancer Letter, July 16, 2010:
A high-profile cancer genomics researcher at Duke University claimed in multiple grant applications that he had been a Rhodes scholar, when, in fact, the Rhodes Trust states flatly that he was not.
Documents obtained by The Cancer Letter show that in biographies submitted to NIH, Duke oncologist and genomics researcher Anil Potti claimed variously to have won the prestigious scholarship in 1995 or 1996, depending on the version of the biography.
Potti also made the Rhodes claim in an application that resulted in a $729,000 grant from the American Cancer Society.
For the rest of the story, download Free Special Issue.
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Harold Varmus Takes NCI Helm With No Promises, No Clichés
From The Cancer Letter, July 16, 2010:
With an energetic hop to the lectern, the new NCI director introduced himself at a town hall meeting at NIH July 12: “Good afternoon, I’m glad to be back in the Natcher Center. I’m Harold Varmus.”
Nobel laureate and former NIH director Varmus, who was sworn in as the 14th NCI director earlier that day by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, answered one key question and set forth some ground rules in his 45-minute appearance:
—Why did he take the job? “I like to work. I was looking for a new job, and, hey, this looks like a great job. So, we’ll see about that.”
—What to call him: “My first name is not Doctor. It’s Harold, and I like to be called Harold.”
—Style of operation: “Let’s try to avoid the classic NIH retort: ‘We’re already doing it.’”
—Words to avoid: “Never refer to an abstraction like the department, the White House, or Building 1. Let’s just talk about who said what to whom.”
—More words to avoid: “Never use ‘impact’ as a verb.”
Now, about that “NCI goal” established in 2003 by former NCI Director Andrew von Eschenbach to “eliminate suffering and death due to cancer” by 2015. (It was printed on the back of NCI business cards, according to an employee who asked Varmus to comment).
Varmus had this to say about that:
“In this administration, we are going to make every effort to control cancer through science. That’s as far as I go. We can’t make promises that will be elusive, and frankly—” The rest of his statement was drowned out by applause.
For the rest of the story, download Free Special Issue.
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In Exit Interview, Niederhuber Says Clinical Trials System Must Refocus To Emphasize Translational Studies
From The Cancer Letter, July 9, 2010:
NCI Director John Niederhuber sat down with editors of The Cancer Letter for an interview on June 29. Niederhuber, who has described himself as the “accidental director,” having taken over management of the institute in October 2005 after NCI Director Andrew von Eschenbach became FDA commissioner, will step down when President Obama’s appointee, Harold Varmus, arrives on July 12. He plans to remain at NCI working in the laboratory he established when he arrived at NCI as deputy director for clinical and translational sciences.
In the interview, Niederhuber expanded on his recent comments on restructuring the NCI clinical trials system, and said one regret he had was not being able to increase per-case payments for patient accrual to trials. He also had two words of advice for his successor: "Work hard."
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the July 9, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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Three Cooperative Groups To Combine Statistical Center Operations
From The Cancer Letter, July 2, 2010:
Three NCI-funded cooperative groups last week said they have started integrating “back end” operations of their statistical centers.
The groups will fuse the data management, quality control, standard operating procedures, administrative functions and information technology of Cancer and Leukemia Group B, North Central Cancer Treatment Group and the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group.
Scientific leadership of the biostatistics component of the three groups will remain separate.
Also in this issue: former cooperative group chairman Richard Schilsky responds to NCI Director John Niederhuber's comments last week.
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the July 2, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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Lame Duck NCI Director: Cancer Centers Should Run Cancer Clinical Trials System
From The Cancer Letter, June 25, 2010:
NCI’s clinical trials program should be structured around the country’s major cancer centers in “a single national program for clinical research” that would replace the existing cooperative group system, lame duck NCI Director John Niederhuber said to the National Cancer Advisory Board.
“We can continue down the road with a 50-year-old structure that we have used for clinical research, or we can become innovative and think about the future and how, if we were given the power and the opportunity, we would redesign the next 50 years in terms of translational and clinical trials structure,” Niederhuber said at the board’s meeting June 22.
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the June 25, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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Medicare's 21% Pay Cut In Effect; Congress Unlikely To Abandon SGR
From The Cancer Letter, June 18, 2010:
Barring a last-minute reprieve from Congress, on Friday, June 18, all doctors—oncologists among them—will be subjected to a 21.3 percent pay cut from Medicare.
This drop in reimbursement will continue until Congress alters the Sustained Growth Rate schedule that was enacted in 1997 to control health care costs, but never produced any sustained cuts.
While doctors were spared actual cuts year-to-year, the impact of SGR has accumulated, creating a $247 billion budgetary illusion, which Congress seems to have no political will to abandon.
Now, oncologists say that these SGR meltdowns could cause them to transfer their Medicare patients to hospitals—if hospitals agree to take them.
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the June 18, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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NIH Director: NCI's Special Authorities “More Of A Negative Than A Positive”
From The Cancer Letter, June 11, 2010:
Special authorities given to NCI under the National Cancer Act of 1971 have been “more of a negative than a positive,” said NIH Director Francis Collins.
In an interview with the journal Science, Collins reignited a controversy that predates the federal government’s “war on cancer” and brings into question survival of NCI’s unique features, including:
• Presidential appointment of the NCI director,
• The institute’s authority to submit an annual “bypass budget,” a document, which reflects the director’s professional judgment of scientific opportunities. At least technically, the document bypasses review by NIH and HHS and is submitted to the president.
• Presidential appointment of members of the National Cancer Advisory Board, which reviews all of the institute’s programs.
• The authority of the President’s Cancer Panel, which is designed to oversee the “National Cancer Program” and inform the White House about barriers to progress against cancer.
For decades, advocates of the cancer program argued that these authorities serve to coordinate the war on cancer as a government-wide priority. Meanwhile, critics countered that these authorities politicize cancer research, creating a strong fiefdom within NIH, and igniting meaningless battles over turf.
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the June 11, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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Shaky Start for FY11 Appropriations Cycle as Congress Feels Pressure to Cut Spending
From The Cancer Letter, June 4, 2010:
The appropriations cycle for 2011 is off to a shaky start, Capitol Hill sources say.
Though the Senate Budget Committee passed a resolution on April 22, the measure has not been brought to the full Senate, presumably because the leadership cannot get sufficient votes to assure passage.
The House version of the budget resolution has not been through markup by the budget committee. The absence of budget resolutions means that the 12 appropriations subcommittees cannot move on to crafting spending bills.
“This is going to be an extraordinarily tough appropriations cycle,” said Mark Smith, principal with Liberty Partners Group.
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the June 4, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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Dispute At City of Hope Pits Center Against For-Profit Physician Group
From The Cancer Letter, May 28, 2010:
City of Hope National Medical Center recently attempted to streamline its operations by ending a long-standing arrangement with a for-profit physician group that manages its patient care, research and teaching operations.
Instead of relying exclusively on Monrovia-based California Cancer Specialists Medical Group Inc., a separate, off-campus, medical group that has the revenues of about $100 million, Duarte-based City of Hope is forming a non-profit medical foundation that would then contract for such services with a newly-formed medical group.
So far, this effort has resulted in a court battle, duels of press releases, and a mass mailing from the medical group to about 10,000 City of Hope cancer patients. The letter claimed that the change would transfer “decision-making in the institution from physicians to non-physicians” and place “clinical and research programs at risk.”
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the May 28, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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White House Picks Harold Varmus For NCI Director
From The Cancer Letter, May 21, 2010:
In an appointment anticipated since March, President Obama announced May 17 his selection of Harold Varmus as director of the National Cancer Institute.
Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since January 2000, will become the first former NIH director and the first Nobel laureate to lead NCI. The nomination doesn't require Senate confirmation.
“Dr. Harold Varmus brings a vast wealth of expertise to this key leadership position,” said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Among his many professional distinctions, he is a Nobel laureate in cancer genetics; has been president of one of the premier cancer research and treatment institutions for the past decade; and previously has served the public as NIH director in the 1990s. His contributions in understanding new knowledge about cancer have provided a foundation for treatments that have helped so many. Today, cancer research is poised to move forward at an unprecedented speed and Harold is ideally qualified to lead the revolution to fight this formidable disease.”
Varmus will become the 14th NCI director since the institute was established in 1937. He will succeed John Niederhuber, who was appointed to the post by President Bush in 2006.
For the rest of the story, go to The Cancer Letter Archive at left to download the May 21, 2010, issue (subscription or day pass required).
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