In recent months, several directors of cancer centers, appearing on The Directors, a segment of The Cancer Letter Podcast, mentioned that their institutions are increasingly providing small grants—typically in the range of $50,000—to scientists to enable them to keep their labs open.
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Leadership is changing at The Wistar Institute and the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute in the months to come—but the leaders of the two institutions say that this will have little if any effect on the clinical-research collaboration that they have spent the past 15years building (The Cancer Letter, July 12, 2019).
“We’ve always argued that money comes and goes, but if you lose a generation of scientists—you can’t buy them back,” said Kelvin Lee, director of the Indiana University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center.
As NCI paylines drop to 4%, cancer centers are tapping into their institutional funds to provide “bridge funding,” typically in $50,000 to $100,000 increments, to enable investigators to keep their labs open until better times return—next year God willing.
As trust in scientific and regulatory institutions frays and the meaning of “gold standard science” is increasingly contested, cancer research faces a credibility test of its own.
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.
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.
In the face of the unknown, two cancer center leaders discuss planning for the future, recovering from setbacks, and holding on to what they still have.
Mary Beckerle, a whitewater kayaker, has advice for all the folks in the cancer field: never catastrophize, never panic.
“I don’t think any good cancer center director would be worth their weight in salt if they weren’t worried about something at night,” said Mark Evers, director of University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center.
