Peer review, registries, and evidence-based patient information have taken a hit in Trump’s first 100 days in office.
This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
In this week’s episode, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, talk about how the Trump administration’s drastic changes to the cancer research enterprise in the past few weeks.
Featured in last week’s issue was the recent cut of NCI’s communications team—an admittedly large department that was responsible for maintaining:
- NCI’s website, which the majority of NCI’s divisions, offices, and centers rely on to do the work that they need to do, according to an inside source.
- Physician Data Query, a freely available source of reliable, regularly updated, unbiased cancer-relevant evidence for health professionals, cancer patients, and the general public. The PDQ is “unparalleled,” experts said.
- NCI’s Cancer Information Service, which is an interactive contact center that provides an online chat service, a patient hotline, an email service, and social media interactions.
“We are kind of seeing pieces of it that nobody else cares about, except if you’re really deep within oncology,” Paul said. “But what happens next is all of this is going to come down on the actual people, the actual patients very quickly. And then, the whole field gets transformed, and this whole political situation gets transformed because I don’t believe that House members or Senate members of either party want to be confronted by cancer patients who are saying, ‘Hey, you’re killing me.’”
Stories mentioned this week include:
- Trump administration is removing the mainstays of NCI and the federal government’s cancer program. Peer review, registries, and evidence-based patient information take a big hit.
- George Weiner: Cancer centers are special, as are site visits in CCSG review.
- Cyber-iconoclast Vinay Prasad named head of FDA’s CBER. An oncologist, Prasad has criticized accelerated approval, next-gen sequencing, and targeted therapies.
- Working with cancer: Rethinking long-term health for working-age adult cancer survivors
- Walter Lawrence Jr.: “The National Cancer Act really gave us a lot of enthusiasm about the future.”
This episode was transcribed using transcription services. It has been reviewed by our editorial staff, but the transcript may be imperfect.
The following is a transcript of this week’s In the Headlines, a weekly series on the Cancer Letter Podcast:
Jacquelyn Cobb: This week on The Cancer Letter Podcast.
Paul Goldberg: One of the interesting things and the most interesting quotes we got in last week’s issue of The Cancer Letter was by someone who didn’t want to be identified by name. But this person said not having an NCI director is probably a part of the plan. It certainly looks like it. So, there’s no one to stand up for NCI right now.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I have that quote here. I mean, you said it pretty perfectly, but just so people have context.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, just read it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The quote is, “I have reached the conclusion that the lack of a director is very purposeful, so they can finish the reorg, the reorganization, and pass the new budget before any opposing advocate is in place. It would be impossible for an NCI director to not advocate against the cuts in particular. Solution, don’t have anyone in the seat.”
Paul Goldberg: There you go.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, very well said. Yeah, a little scary. Not a little scary. Very scary.
Paul Goldberg: You’re listening to The Cancer Letter Podcast. The Cancer Letter is a weekly independent magazine covering oncology since 1973. I’m your host, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter.
Jacquelyn Cobb: And I’m your host, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter. We’ll be bringing you the latest stories, groundbreaking research and critical conversations shaping oncology.
Paul Goldberg: So, let’s get going.
Jacquelyn Cobb: How are you doing, Paul?
Paul Goldberg: I am doing great.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, we just found out you have a ring light and we are very excited about that. The lighting on your end is incredible.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, fantastic. Where the ring light?
Jacquelyn Cobb: I know. Well, I don’t even have a ring light. Well, I guess I’m a millennial, not a Gen Z, but I really imagine a ring light is like the influencers and all that stuff, so I’m very excited to hear you have one. You’re ready to go.
Paul Goldberg: I’m what young people call a boomer, and ring lights are not our thing.
Jacquelyn Cobb: But you have one. You had one before the podcast. What did you use it for? Just for interviews and stuff?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: No, somebody bought it for me.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Got it.
Paul Goldberg: Probably, Katie.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, probably a millennial or a Gen Z, perfect.
Paul Goldberg: Probably, somebody closer to your age…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, yup.
Paul Goldberg: … my age. People my age don’t have ring lights.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, yup. All right. After that very important conversation.
Paul Goldberg: Yes, yes. With setting the stage for what really is important. But this is important too.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. I will go through the headlines from last week. We had a comprehensive story as our story one basically explaining where NCI is now 100 days after President Trump’s inauguration. We’ll be diving into that story mostly for this podcast episode.
So, I won’t get into too much detail now. But the short answer is that it’s not doing great, so we’ll definitely dive into that more. We had a guest editorial by George Wiener basically talking about a similar thing, but a little bit more narrow in scope. He wrote about how moving CCSG review to NIH and the resulting loss of the site visit as part of the CCSG review process or application process would be detrimental to the specialness of cancer centers. And I say specialness because that was the headline. That’s a… Well, he didn’t say specialness, he said, “They are special.”
So, kind of reworking that headline a little. Claire wrote a story about Vinay Prasad who she very, in an inspired move called a cyber iconoclast. He was named Director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. So, we went into… Well, Claire really went into… And Paul, went into sort of his history and what he stood for throughout his career and maybe how that relates to how he will approach his position now.
We had a guest editorial about the long-term health of working age adult cancer survivors, and in the archive section this week covered a conversation with Walter Lawrence Jr. who was a giant in surgical oncology, and his thoughts on the effect of the National Cancer Act. He died in 2021.
And just a heads-up about that in the archives, it’s kind of a special one this week or last week because the oral history with Lawrence is the first episode in the relaunch of the Cancer History Project Podcast, which features archival content and interviews about the history of oncology.
So, after all that, we got through in the beginning piece. I’ll pop it over to Paul to really just go over what has happened at NCI. We wrote this story last week and it was kind of a crazy thing to cover. I feel like I say that every week, but it was a crazy thing to sort of keep up with everything that was happening even within this last week. So, a lot happened, and I will let Paul start with that.
Paul Goldberg: Well, one of the things about Walter Lawrence is really, that interview was the beginning of the Cancer History Project. Rob Winn and I sat down with him. It was really fantastic to just start getting the information and getting the oral histories together.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So, we didn’t call it Cancer History Project, but it was going to be Cancer History Project. We talked about it…
Jacquelyn Cobb: I didn’t know that.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s really cool.
Paul Goldberg: No, it wasn’t discussed except a few of us sort of said, “Hey, we must do this.” And it was just, the timing was extraordinary because 50 years since the signing of the National Cancer Act, and it was just coming up and look at where we are now.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: It’s National Cancer Act backwards, it seems.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah, you want to explain what that means?
Paul Goldberg: It’s in reverse. It seems like a lot of things are very scary right now. Going back, do we want to do? Yeah, let’s go back. Mary Lasker, after taking control of the American Cancer Society, realized that she was doing it wrong. And by the way, she set up the Peer Review System that later went to NIH.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Wow.
Paul Goldberg: But she realized that she was doing it wrong because there’s only so much that the American Cancer Society could do for cancer research and research needed to happen. She saw that, and the only place to get the kind of money together that needed to be spent was the US government, and she went after that with full force. And that is the National Cancer Act. What would Mary do right now? I don’t… Actually, that’s a great question. We should all be talking. We did run a piece, a really cool piece by Kevin Cullen…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: … with kind of like, what would she do? We’re all trying to channel her in some ways. I think the only thing that’s not been done is, we haven’t heard from patients…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: …people who are going to be affected, who are already affected. Some don’t know they will be affected, but it’s life and death for some of them.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So, I’m looking forward to hearing from patients.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, that’s definitely going to be a priority for us and has been. But I mean, it’s tricky to try to cover both the policy level thing and the patient. And I mean, I think that’s definitely a priority for us, but it’s something we’re going to do more going forward, I think. We had that one really good interview with Kelly Spill two weeks ago, last week. I don’t even know now. But yeah, we definitely have more coming up soon.
Paul Goldberg: Absolutely, absolutely. And this is, I mean, everything we’re going to talk about for the rest of this podcast is about how certain programs are doing. But programs are there for a reason, and that reason is patients and patients are going to be harmed by a lot of this. So…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yup, absolutely.
Paul Goldberg: And it’s not a power play. It’s not about power play. We cover power plays. That’s kind of where we live. But I think we need to expand our range and we’re doing it. We’re doing it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Well, that’s what I mean, just recenter on what the actual impact of all of this is, because we do get not lost, but we do kind of sink into the fact that we write for mostly oncologists or people in the field. That’s our audience. But yeah, recentering in a time like this on what the actual effect of all of this is, is I think very important.
Paul Goldberg: Absolutely. I’m wondering what happens to kids who might not be able to get in the clinical trial with cancer.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, that’s going to be a big story for this week.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, I think, I hope so. Some of this is going to be years away, and a lot of it is happening right now.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, yup. So, let’s dive into what actually happening is happening at NCI right now. That’s probably a good to…
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: So, yeah, do you want to take us through some of the things that we covered in the cover story last week, Paul?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. I think what we tried to do was in the lead story was look at all of the events that are taking place and see what they point to.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: And it’s kind of scary because let’s look at really some of the points. NCI has killed the BSA, so that’s a peer review question.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup.
Paul Goldberg: NCI has eliminated its information arm, which is actually, okay, so here’s a bunch of government PR people. They’re all gone. Okay, well, maybe people don’t really need to worry about it, but let’s not lose sight of why it was there to begin with. It was there to be begin with because under the National Cancer Act, NCI had the same authorities as NASA because if we are going to be doing a moonshot on cancer, and I’m talking about the first moonshot, we will go to the moon kind of thing. Kennedy kind of inspired, “Well, you need it.” People at NCI who were going to do what people at NASA did, which is tell the story. But in this case, it’s even more interesting because the PDQ…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, yup. And the patient hotline.
Paul Goldberg: The PDQ, yeah. It’s Patient Desk… PDQ is the data query, its… Physicians use it. It’s about levels of evidence. It’s about what is scientific and what is not scientific. So, imagine this, so you’ve gotten rid of peer review, you’ve gotten rid of physician data query, and you’ve gotten rid of people who can run the website for the national cancer. So, basically without the communication arm, NCI is left incommunicado.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, yup
Paul Goldberg: Okay? So, there’s also no registries, cancer registries, which by the way is a system of cancer registries that is the envy of the world, and it’s being tossed overboard like so much garbage. And that is really unfortunate. So, basically, we will not know whether we’re winning the war on cancer, whether we’re going to the moon or in the other direction.
Jacquelyn Cobb: What’s the other direction? Into the earth?
Paul Goldberg: I don’t know. There’s the systematic peer review that’s going away, plus the cancer centers, which are a part of the National Cancer Act as well. So, they just stopped reviewing cancer centers as a kind of a separate entity and eliminated, likely eliminated the whole institution of a site visit, which is really important.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup.
Paul Goldberg: Now, cancer centers are unlike… There are no other… There’s no equivalent to them elsewhere at NIH.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So, everything that had made NCI separate and special is being stripped away. And nobody seems to really know, and nobody seems to, since we haven’t heard from patients.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: But you know what? They’re going to wake up.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, people in the field are definitely awake. I think it’s sort of this moment of shock. And then, how do we organize to take some action to protect what is so, again, special about cancer centers and NCI and the National Cancer Act and things like that. I mean, that’s what George Wiener said in his article. He was explaining why they’re so important, why these site visits are so important. Because outside of oncology, people don’t necessarily know why, right?
Paul Goldberg: No.
Jacquelyn Cobb: You have to really be able to defend it.
Paul Goldberg: No. You have to understand the history of the field and the history of the field is the government has a very important role to play here. And the other part of the history of the field is that this, meaning the National Cancer Act of 1971 is the first time that a country developed, excuse me, declared a war on a disease. First and only time, and nothing like it ever happened. And the institutions are different and interesting. And by the way, also the importance of cancer research too, within the U.S. government and its uniqueness within NIH. Let’s not forget that either.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: The National Cancer Institute is the only institution that has, and the only institute or center that has an NCAB where members are appointed by the president.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Really? I didn’t realize that.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Wow.
Paul Goldberg: Others have these councils, and the councils are named by the institute director, I believe.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Wow.
Paul Goldberg: So, there is an NCAB. They could not get rid of NCAB, but they did get rid of the BSA, which I have personally seen. BSAs save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by just saying, “Nah, this is just won’t do. Give us something better.”
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Do you want to just explain for people who aren’t super familiar what they’re saying no to?
Paul Goldberg: Well, there were specific cases of it, and we covered them usually. And a lot of times, things just would be kind of, NCI would self-censor. They wouldn’t take it to NCAB because they’d know that they get slaughtered within NCAB.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh, my gosh.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. There was this wonderful case of the proteomics, whatever it was, program that was that Andrew von Eschenbach tried to get through, and it kind of went through. But on the second try and the first time they actually said, “No, no. This is not science. This needs to be fixed. This needs to be fixed.” And…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Well, that’s what it’s like programs and research priorities, right?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: That’s sort of what BSA like, what level of things are they deciding on usually, or giving advice about…
Paul Goldberg: Extramural research.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: All the big programs and extramural research would go through BSA. And it’s interesting that the BSA was formed by Rick Klausner out of the Extramural Advisory Boards of each of the divisions.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Okay.
Paul Goldberg: So, each of the divisions had an intramural and an extramural arm, and all of the intramural arms were the Board of Scientific Counselors. And that remains, but the BSA is the extramural.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Got it.
Paul Goldberg: A situation where peer review doesn’t… You benefit from peer review.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, it’s always a good thing.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, especially efficiency wise, right?
Paul Goldberg: Well, yeah. And these were always fun discussions to listen to BSA.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: I mean, you’ve sat through a few of them.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. It was always fun. You go, you talk to people, especially before COVID, that was fun. But post-COVID, how much money do you think they saved by getting rid of BSA? I think it was 10 bucks.
Jacquelyn Cobb: You’re like tens of dollars.
Paul Goldberg: Tens of dollars’ worth it take.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh, my gosh, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Well, it’s actually probably not true. It’s probably a little bit more. But it’s…
Jacquelyn Cobb: Not significant, yeah, especially considering the value.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So, it is concerning, but we are kind of seeing pieces of it that nobody else cares about, except if you’re really deep within oncology. But what happens next is all of this is going to come down on the actual people, the actual patients very quickly. And then, the whole field gets transformed, and this whole political situation gets transformed because who wants to name? I don’t believe that house members or senate members of either party want to be confronted by cancer patients who are saying, “Hey, you’re killing me.”
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: That is not going to stand. I’m sorry.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, of course.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Lawmakers, regardless of party, want their constituents to not be dying of cancer. I feel like that’s a pretty easy cause to get behind.
Paul Goldberg: And we’re totally nonpartisan, by the way.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Paul Goldberg: So, it’s just when you see something being destroyed that shouldn’t be destroyed. And one of the interesting things that the most interesting quotes we got in last week’s issue of The Cancer Letter was by someone who didn’t want to be identified by name. But this person said that, “Not having an NCI director is probably a part of the plan.” It certainly looks like it. So, there’s no one to stand up for NCI right now.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I have that quote here. I mean, you said it pretty perfectly, but just so people have context.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, just read It.
Jacquelyn Cobb: The quote is, “I have reached the conclusion that the lack of a director is very purposeful, so they can finish the reorg, the reorganization, and passed the new budget before any opposing advocate is in place. It would be impossible for an NCI director to not advocate against the cuts in particular. Solution, don’t have anyone in the seat.”
Paul Goldberg: There you go.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. Very well said. Yeah, a little scary. Not a little scary. Very scary.
Paul Goldberg: Well, it’s a good time to be a journalist.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Oh, my gosh. Back to that. It is a good time to be a journalist. It’s not a great time to be a human. But…
Paul Goldberg: Not enjoying myself right now watching this being destroyed, and something that we cover and understand and understand why it’s there.
Jacquelyn Cobb: And care about.
Paul Goldberg: And maybe… Yeah. However, if you want an even bigger picture, if you can put up with that, the even bigger picture is that the system that we have now probably would not have been built de novo. It produced advances that we have right now. But knowing what we know now, we would probably want an even better system and would be able to construct it. So, really, a reconstruction is what a lot of my friends that I talk to, especially with alcohol involved, are setting their sights on.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: They’re basically saying, “Yeah, let’s stick around.” And I mean, I want to be there for that. So, I’m looking forward to that.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely a silver lining, so… And pretty exciting one.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, assuming that we get through this. But I think one crucial element for getting through this is to hear from patients and to make sure that people who make policy hear from patients.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup.
Paul Goldberg: And they will.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup.
Paul Goldberg: It’s inevitable. Because as I said, some of the results are like depth charges, but some of them are immediate. Some will go off in a year or two, but some are happening right this instant.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, yup.
Paul Goldberg: And that’s the ones… Also, you need leadership. You need a face to this.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: What you need is a Danny Thomas type of situation starting to happen.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: You need someone to lead it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, do you want to explain who Danny Thomas is for?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. No, he was a comedian who started the St. Jude, and he had television shows where he would have kids with cancer and raise money for it. So, yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yup, a public facing…
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be a comedian.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, that’s actually in the job requirements.
Paul Goldberg: That would be great if you know anybody. So, yeah, I think we should probably talk about Vinay Prasad.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes. Wow. I forgot. I got so lost in the story. Yes, we should talk about Vinay Prasad. He has been named Director of CBER. Do you want to talk a little bit about…
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at FDA. Yeah, a lot of us were waiting to see where Vinay would end up in this administration.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah?
Paul Goldberg: Oh, yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Did you know or have a…
Paul Goldberg: I was absolutely certain he would end up either as NCI Director or as CBER Director or maybe FDA Commissioner.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Are you serious? I did not realize you thought that
Paul Goldberg: I mean, absolutely. We all knew it. Everybody knew it. Oh, it’s like, it was like, “Oh, where will Vinay end up?”
Jacquelyn Cobb: Wow. That’s crazy.
Paul Goldberg: And he ended up in one of those places that we all expected him to end up in.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yes.
Paul Goldberg: Well, he’s something of a social media star. Yeah, he was also a former NCI fellow, so he is a skeptic about many things, and being a skeptic, by the way, is a good thing.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: He’s taken it a little further than most people in the field, at least further than the mainstream. Well, of course, being a skeptic means you are outside the mainstream anyway, if you’re good at it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Some of what he did is we covered him very… His entire kind of path, very closely over the years, and I’m kind of happy to see a lot of our old coverage being discovered by folks as we look at usage statistics and what people are reading. And a lot of people are reading our back coverage of Prasad.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: And one of the things that I think is probably important is what he did in Oregon where he chaired a committee of the Medicaid board of the health board, whatever it’s called. It’s in the story. It’s accurate in the story that tried to get rid of the benefit of next-gen sequencing for Medicaid beneficiaries in the state, which is largely symbolic because you’re really talking about a very small number of people, right?
Jacquelyn Cobb: Mm-hmm.
Paul Goldberg: Because Medicare is for the elderly, Medicaid is for the younger people, and how many of the younger people get cancer within one state and how many people would be affected. That probably was fairly small. But the symbol of the whole thing that you create, you say that this doesn’t do you… That this is not useful, next-gen sequencing.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: And next-gen sequencing is really the foundation of where medicine is going now. So, now CBER processes a lot of the applications for pharma and biotech industries that point to immunotherapies and cellular therapies. So, some of the most exciting stuff will be going through him if he doesn’t believe truly in all of this. I don’t know how much of it has been resolved. He certainly deserves the benefit of the doubt right now, and I’ve reached out to him as we were doing the story, and he hasn’t responded. I’ll probably reach out to him again.
It will be very interesting to see what he is thinking about all of this. And his most recent talk within FDA was apparently very, was not the firebrand, let’s get rid of next-gen sequencing. Let’s get rid of… Immunotherapies are not effective, that kind of stuff. And also, we must always have the survival, overall survival for approval. He’s never really… That can’t stay.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah, not him in this position, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. I mean, it would be nice to have overall survival.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Of course, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, yeah, it’s always nice to have it.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: But you can’t tease it out from the number of lines of therapy that the patient generally has throughout the lifetime.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: So, we’ll see where that goes. But yeah, if FDA goes the way of what we’re seeing within NIH, that too will cause some concern. And also, the industry right now is probably trying to figure out what to do.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Absolutely.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah.
Jacquelyn Cobb: We’ll continue to cover it, especially, I’m eager to hear about what Prasad’s initial actions are and stuff like that. And obviously, what’s happening in NCI and NIH more broadly in the coming weeks. And we’ll continue to cover it. We will be on it. Yes, we have a lot of exciting stories coming up as well that are not necessarily policy-related. So, we have a nice smorgasbord of things to read in the coming issues.
Paul Goldberg: That is what it is. I like smorgasbord. It’s got herring in it usually, and all sorts of Jewish food.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Love it. Sounds good. That or a charcuterie board. Take your picture.
Paul Goldberg: Charcuterie board may not have as much Jewish food.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Probably, doesn’t have herring. But… All right. Well, thank you, Paul. I’ll see you next week.
Paul Goldberg: All right. It’s a great time to be a journalist.
Jacquelyn Cobb: I didn’t even feed you the line that time. You did that all by yourself.
Paul Goldberg: I know. It just felt good.
Jacquelyn Cobb: Thank you for joining us on The Cancer Letter Podcast, where we explore the stories shaping the future of oncology. For more in-depth reporting and analysis, visit us at cancerletter.com with over 200 site license subscriptions. You may already have access through your workplace. If you found this episode valuable, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share. Together, we’ll keep the conversation going.Paul Goldberg: Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and thank you for listening.
