Richard Pazdur, founding director of FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence and long-time FDA visionary, has accepted the top job at FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research following George F. Tidmarsh’s dramatic ouster from the position.
At a time when federal immigration policies are becoming stricter, Kunle Odunsi, director of University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, reflected on the fact that cancer research is a highly international community.
One of the first things that happened as part of President Donald Trump’s “flooding of the zone” in January was the disappearance of the site visit as part of the Cancer Center Support Grant review.
Early endpoints have the potential to get effective drugs to patients faster, but granting approval to drugs—even accelerated approval—comes with the risk that ineffective or even harmful drugs will be given to patients.
“Our goal was very clear from the beginning, which was to develop a user-friendly simple chat-like interface that would provide specific high-quality answers to questions that our members would bring, utilizing only our content,” said Clifford A. Hudis, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and executive vice chair of the Conquer Cancer Foundation.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this week’s episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast features three oncology leaders whose research focuses on identifying and solving health disparities specifically in the Latinx community.
With major leadership changes, grant disruptions and terminations, and a stoked distrust in science, Steven Artandi, the director of Stanford Cancer Center, worries that young investigators will feel disenchanted by the U.S. research atmosphere and take their work and study elsewhere.
“Patient stories, as you know, can either make or break a story,” said Laurie McGinley, a former health and science editor at The Washington Post who is now on the board of Patient Action for Cancer Research, or PACR, a new advocacy organization aimed at organizing and amplifying patient voices in an effort to protect life-saving federal health research.
With little fanfare, Anthony Letai, a highly respected physician-scientist, was sworn in as the 18th director of the National Cancer Institute on Sept. 29. Then, two days later, on Oct. 1, the government shut down.
With the fiscal year drawing to a close, grant funding from NCI is picking up speed, offering a glimmer of hope to cancer researchers who are beginning to feel cautiously optimistic about the road ahead.
