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.
This episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Following firm bipartisan pushback against the White House’s proposed budget cuts for FY2026, both the House and Senate have reaffirmed their support for biomedical research.
At last week’s annual symposium marking the 50th anniversary of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center first securing its designation, former NCI directors Ned Sharpless and Kim Rathmell expressed optimism about the future of cancer research.
In the podcast, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, reflected on the former directors’ sentiments.
“It’s very interesting to hear this and very reassuring, but also not really that surprising, because Congress, both the House and Senate, are poised to either give NIH a small increase or maybe keep things at flat funding, so that’s not the 40% cut that the administration wanted,” Paul said.
The Republican party is to thank for saving NIH’s budget, said Paul.
“I think we’ve felt a great sense of urgency, at the same time a lack of agency, since the upheaval began at NIH,” Claire said.
“Its not easy, things aren’t great,” Paul said. “What stays, what goes, it’s not really clear. If you were to look at the damage report, there is damage. But it’s not fatal, it’s a bunch of little flesh wounds.”
And at the moment, the money is flowing, Paul said.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
- NCI is “really, really sturdy” and won’t break, former directors Ned Sharpless and Kim Rathmell say at UNC Lineberger symposium
- AACR Cancer Progress Report makes the case for federal investment in cancer research
- Paul Thurman: Urgently needed: A funding mechanism to insulate cancer research from political whims
- George Weiner: How today’s uncertainty can motivate young investigators to double down on their passion
- Ousted CDC director testifies before Senate HELP Committee
- CDC’s ACIP makes changes to childhood vaccine recommendations in first meeting since Monarez’s ouster
- FDA cracks down on direct-to-consumer ads, including the Hims & Hers Superbowl blitz
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: The most interesting thing to me was what Kim Rathmell said in that conversation with Ned, which is when she was trying to make some changes within NCI … which by the way, are really needed, you really do need to make changes in NCI … as she was doing that, people would call, telling her, “Ah, don’t worry about it. You’re not going to break it.” Her line is … which I think should be written on the coffee mugs of NCI … is, “NCI is really, really sturdy. You’re not going to break it.” Well, it’s probably you can. You can. You can harm it, you can chip it, but you won’t really break it like that quickly. Eventually everything can be broken.
Claire Marie Porter: I think she also says that you can count on the NCI.
Paul Goldberg: You can count on the NCI, yeah.
Claire Marie Porter: “Count on the NCI,” is the last half of that quote.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. If I could needlepoint, I would needlepoint that on a pillow.
Claire Marie Porter: Maybe we can get Katie to embroider that for someone.
Paul Goldberg: No, she’s not going to do that.
Claire Marie Porter: No. Well, I’ll ask her.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, she might do it for you.
You are 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: 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: Let’s get going.
Claire Marie Porter: Hi, Paul.
Paul Goldberg: Hi, Claire. How are you?
Claire Marie Porter: I’m pretty good, pretty good. Had a really chill weekend. What about you?
Paul Goldberg: Oh, ours was anything but chill. We had a wedding, my stepdaughter’s wedding, so there were many people at the house. They just picked up the dance floor from the garden. It’s great.
Claire Marie Porter: I love it. I keep picturing. I really grew up on the Nancy Meyers Father of the Bride movies with Steve Martin and Martin Short. I don’t know if you’ve seen these. The very first film, the wedding takes place at their house, and Martin Short is this absurd wedding coordinator who brings in a flock of swans and is way over the budget. There’s all these behind-the-scenes capers and it’s hilarious, but it sounds like it went pretty smoothly for you.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah, it wasn’t that. It was another kind. No, no real … no, no, no. No mishaps whatsoever. It was flawless, and the weather was great.
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah. That’s so lovely. I love it.
Paul Goldberg: My daughter’s boyfriend, who is Mexican, and he had this idea that if you stick a knife in the ground before an event, the weather would be perfect, and it worked.
Claire Marie Porter: It worked out?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah. It was purely scientific.
Claire Marie Porter: Purely, yeah. Yeah. No superstition whatsoever on that one.
Paul Goldberg: Yes.
Claire Marie Porter: Well, it’s good to know. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. It’s new science. We call it new science.
Claire Marie Porter: New science, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: It wasn’t really gold standard science, but it worked.
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah. Yeah. It could get there, maybe, with time.
Paul Goldberg: If we keep studying it and being very selective with results, we’ll get it confirmed.
Claire Marie Porter: Yes, exactly. I’m suggestible. Well, I will take us through the headlines, because Jacquelyn is not here today. We have a lot to cover. On our cover, Story One this past week was a fireside chat featuring former NCI directors Ned Sharpless and Kim Rathmell at a UNC Lineberger symposium that was celebrating Shelley Earp. It’s this nuanced conversation that we’ll talk about a little later that reflects on policy engagement, how science is communicated, the obstacles of being a young investigator, and the current state of NCI.
Then Story Two was written by our fellow, Sara Willa Ernst, on NCI’s release of the names of the members of the newly-formed ad hoc Working Group on Extramural Research Concepts and Programs. That group will perform the peer review functions of the now-defunct Board of Scientific Advisors, or BSA.
Story Three was also written by Sara. It was on this year’s 2025 AACR Cancer Progress Report, which makes the case for federal investment in cancer research, saying that it yields a good return on investment.
Story Four was a letter to the editor written by Paul Thurman, professor of management and analytics at Columbia University Medical Center, on the urgent need to develop a mechanism to protect cancer research funding from political whims. This was a response to New York Times’s Jonathan Mahler’s article last week, the September 14th issue of the New York Times Magazine, on the Trump administration’s assault on cancer research. Note that Mahler was also on our podcast last week to talk about that, so definitely worth checking out.
Then Story Five was a guest editorial written by University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center’s George Wiener, on how today’s uncertainty can motivate young investigators to double down on their passion. He talks about the lessons that young scientists can learn from his Studs Terkel boxed set, which was something I had to look up, but now I wish I had a cassette player to listen to. This story really ties in with the lead, offering some poignant historical perspective from great thinkers of the time that all felt that their particular moment in time was also one of unprecedented existential threats. Just a timely guest editorial.
Then as usual, a very busy cancer policy section. A few highlights. Ousted CDC director Susan Monarez testified before the Senate health committee. Then along those lines, CDC’s ACIP held its first vaccine advisory committee meeting that took place over two days last week, and that ultimately made changes to childhood vaccine recommendations. FDA cracked down on direct-to-consumer ads targeting Hims & Hers telehealth company, among others. Take a look. There’s a few more.
That’s all of the stories from last week. I think the theme of this issue that Paul pointed out earlier to me was that NCI is maybe going to be okay after all, and the sense of pending disaster and doom or gloom has maybe been a little bit overemphasized. Is that the takeaway?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. It’s very interesting to hear this and very reassuring, but also not really that surprising, because Congress, both the House and Senate, are poised to either give NIH a small increase or maybe keep things at flat funding, so that’s not the 40% cut that the administration wanted. It was also something that happened because of Republicans, not Democrats. Republicans have basically said no on NIH, so I guess they still love research. Makes it very interesting to see what’s actually transpiring versus what we believe is transpiring.
Claire Marie Porter: Right.
Paul Goldberg: Actually, Jonathan Mahler’s piece is very interesting, the war on cancer canceled. That was the cover of The New York Times Magazine. We talked about that. The administration, looking at the budget proposal, really did try to cancel the war on cancer. Once you look at that, it’s really not happening. At the moment, the money is flowing. The money is also, with some difficulty, coming out of NCI. It’s flying out the door, trying to beat the end-of-fiscal-year deadline where it goes back into the Treasury. Probably not a whole lot will go back, and it’s not easy. Things aren’t great.
Claire Marie Porter: Right.
Paul Goldberg: There is probably going to be political review of this stuff, but what stays, what goes, it’s not really clear. If you were to look at the damage report, there is damage, yeah, but it’s not fatal. It’s a bunch of little flesh wounds, or big flesh wounds. Yeah, it was very interesting when I went to the UNC 50th Symposium, 49th Symposium. Actually, I did not remember what number symposium, but it was 50 years since designation for UNC. It was really fantastic. A lot of really interesting, fascinating lectures, some of which I could even follow.
Then there was this armchair discussion by two former NCI directors who were mentored by Shelley Earp. One of them is Kim Rathmell, the other is Ned Sharpless, and they both are former faculty members at UNC. They both said that, essentially, what is the actual impact and what is actually happening, and what is actually happening isn’t as dire as one might believe. Some of it is dire. It depends on where you are. For some institutions and some areas of research, things aren’t good.
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah. A takeaway, I guess my main takeaway from the conversation … and I think Sharpless really talked about this point a lot … was just the impact that I guess crisis fatigue or this crisis rhetoric can have on young scientists. I was just thinking about, as a journalist, but also as someone who grew up pre and post internet in the ’90s, we are living in this permanent emergency mindset, and I think we’ve felt like a great sense of urgency, at the same time a lack of agency, since things really started, the upheaval began at NIH. I think about what can I take away from that conversation and apply to my practice as a journalist. I already tried to set aside my biases and my anxieties and not go into reporting a story with a preconceived narrative.
I think The Cancer Letter does a really good job of staying balanced. There has been, like you said, some very serious upheaval. I think Rathmell used the metaphor of a tornado or a hurricane or a storm is headed in your direction. What do you do? How do you prepare for that? You don’t know if it’s going to hit you or go around you, but this state of permanent emergency or doom and gloom or constant crisis can lead to burnout pretty quickly. That was just a reflection that I had, listening to them. I thought it was really wise, just a poignant response to the moment that I haven’t really heard yet.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. We’ll be hearing a lot more of it. I am curious to find out what’s going to happen with the NCI director job. Whom is it going to? Is it going to be someone who is very MAHA … don’t believe I’m already using that word … or will it be someone who is a real scientist? I’m getting a sense that it might be the latter, and then what happens?
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah. I mean, are they coming into … NCI is at a good place, I guess. It looks like they’re getting a raise. It’s not a bad time to move into that position, unlike some other agency heads.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Well, the most interesting thing to me was what Kim Rathmell said in that conversation with Ned, which is when she was trying to make some changes within NCI … which by the way, are really needed, you really do need to make changes in NCI … as she was doing that, people would call, telling her, “Ah, don’t worry about it. You’re not going to break it.” Her line is … which I think should be written on the coffee mugs of NCI … is, “NCI is really, really sturdy. You’re not going to break it.” Well, it’s probably you can. You can. You can harm it, you can chip it, but you won’t really break it like that quickly. Eventually everything can be broken.
Claire Marie Porter: I think she also says that you can count on the NCI.
Paul Goldberg: You can count on the NCI, yeah.
Claire Marie Porter: “Count on the NCI,” is the last half of that quote.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. If I could needlepoint, I would needlepoint that on a pillow.
Claire Marie Porter: Maybe we can get Katie to embroider that for someone.
Paul Goldberg: No, she’s not going to do that.
Claire Marie Porter: No. Well, I’ll ask her.
Paul Goldberg: Oh, she might do it for you, but then, she’s not an embroiderer, she’s …
Claire Marie Porter: Needlepoint. I get those mixed up. Which is the one that’s in the circle? Yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Well, there is this cross stitch kind of a thing, thingamajig you do, where you can put … I don’t even know what it’s called, but you can do these designs on your jean jackets and stuff. I have one.
Claire Marie Porter: Well, maybe you could get … yeah, could get …
Paul Goldberg: “NCI is really, really sturdy. You won’t break it.”
Claire Marie Porter: Just get it on your jean pocket or something.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Or you can make T-shirts, “Really, really sturdy.” I mean, we’re making fun of it, but it’s actually really not something to make fun of. It’s actually kind of words of inspiration to think about it, that maybe, maybe, things will turn out to be okay. It’s also interesting to hear people say these are unprecedented times, but really, time by definition is unprecedented, but this is unusual. This feels different. Well, maybe it’ll start feeling the same if they bring in a really good NCI director. That’s not to say … a permanent NCI director. Lowy is great, but Lowy is acting.
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah. I mean, I think, again, something that we, or me as a journalist, to just be able to write and not give into this crisis fatigue mindset is just to remember that especially in terms of health, just because not everything that the Trump administration does is going to be bad for cancer. A lot of it could be really good. It needs scrutiny, but it reminds me to step back a little bit and be more open-minded as a reporter as well, to better tailor policy messaging, yeah.
Paul Goldberg: Well, yeah. We all have to be careful on this, but also we have to say what we see. We have to state what we see. For example, the second story we ran, which was about this group, the ad hoc group of NCAB that is going to serve the same functions, essentially, as BSA. BSA was taken apart by DOGE early on in the administration, and then they decided to essentially reconstitute something very, very, very similar that’s going to perform exactly the same functions. I mean, the major difference, I think, in those two groups, BSA and this ad hoc group, is who’s going to sign your letter of appointment. Is it the HHS secretary or is it an NCI high official?
Claire Marie Porter: Right, right.
Paul Goldberg: Dinah Singer signed one of them, which is, yeah, what difference does it make, as long as NCI benefits from rigorous peer review. Looking at that group, my God, there wasn’t a dud among them.
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah, yeah. A similar book, but a different cover?
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. Yeah. These are really good people. It’s a really good board. I’m not worried.
Claire Marie Porter: Well, if you’re not worried, I’m not worried.
Paul Goldberg: Yeah. The next question is, of course, what they’re going to do with the advice, and they haven’t really. I don’t know. We’ll see.
Claire Marie Porter: Yeah, we will see. It’s a great time to be a journalist.
Paul Goldberg: The best. The best time to be a journalist. You got me going on this again. Thank you.
Claire Marie Porter: Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that one back. Well, it’s nice talking to you, Paul, as usual.
Paul Goldberg: Well, thank you, Claire.
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.
