While every agency under HHS, particularly FDA, has seen historic leadership shakeups and massive cuts to personnel and funding over the course of the second Trump administration—NCI has been spared, even getting a small raise, under the direction of NCI Director Anthony Letai.
This episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Youtube.
“For some reason the wheels have not come off NCI, the wheels are very much on and it’s kind of moving forward,” said Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter.
Is it luck?
This has happened in previous administrations. Some agencies have done very well, some have not, Paul said.
But at a recent Senate hearing with the typical contentious moments between Democrats and Republican agency heads, Letai was spared the drama. He wasn’t asked about vapes—a hot button topic of the last few weeks that led to the resignation of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary—and he wasn’t asked about payout rates.
Meanwhile, the word “moonshot” was thrown around at a City of Hope-convened symposium on the microbiome. HHS Secretary Kennedy called for a “moonshot” targeted on the role of the microbiome in cancer, which was unexpected.
“When people say, ‘Oh, we’re going to do a moonshot,’ what they really want to be saying is something like, ‘We are going to project manage this beast, and we’re going to emphasize certain kinds of scientific research,'” said Paul.
In this episode of In the Headlines, Paul and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, discuss why NCI seems beyond reproach, the microbiome symposium, and the implications of a new cancer “moonshot.”
“To me, the microbiome has been this MAHA-adjacent wellness topic that happens to have a really strong scientific foundation,” Jacquelyn said. “So, to me, this moonshot, whatever you want to call it, but this push for microbiome research feels to me like, ‘Oh, there happens to be this … overlap where this is something that the MAHA, RFK people find interesting and find important and it’s preventative. It’s almost, not holistic, but it’s less pharmaceutical, which is, I think, an important point that you talked about, why NCI has to be involved is that there’s not necessarily going to be pharmaceutical products that promise profits afterwards, like the typical cancer drug pipeline.”
The overlap between the MAHA agenda and cancer research could be impactful.
“So, it’s just interesting to me where it almost feels like the field is seeing, “Okay, we have this MAHA leader who wants to focus on this type of stuff, what’s the highest return subtopic that will actually help cancer patients?” Jacquelyn said.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
- Kennedy calls for a “moonshot” targeted on the role of the microbiome in cancer
- Marcel van den Brink: Microbiome research is now in “critical phase” where evidence points to therapeutic use
- NCI’s Letai gets softball questions from Senate appropriators at an otherwise contentious hearing
- USPSTF leaders John Wong and Esa Davis fired by Kennedy, leaving the panel rudderless
- UMGCCC neuro-oncologist navigates the reality of his father’s pancreatic cancer
- FDA’s acting drug chief, acting vaccines chief, and chief of staff ousted in the wake of Makary departure
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 interesting thing to me is seeing the contrast between the FDA story and the NCI story, because the FDA, you could see the wheels coming off that thing for months and months and months. And in fact, the minute… You could see it. For some reason, the wheels have not come off NCI and the wheels are very much on and, in fact, it’s moving forward. I don’t know the story beyond maybe it might be luck of the draw. It could be just as simple as that.
And by the way, this kind of thing has happened in previous administrations too, not precisely in the same way. Some agencies have done really well and some agencies have gone into very unpleasant spaces.
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.
Life moves fast. It’s fierce, persistent, determined. At City of Hope Cancer Center, they are too. Their groundbreaking research and discoveries have impacted millions of lives globally.
They’re moving science forward with the hope, passion, and speed every diagnosis deserves for a cancer-free future. City of Hope, pursuing cancer cures at the speed of life. Learn more at cityofhope.org.
Jacquelyn: Hi, Paul. How are you?
Paul: Hi, Jacquelyn. How are you?
Jacquelyn: Good, good. I think I have said a couple times that, hee-hee, sorry we’re doing a giggly intro, but it’s just we have five full seconds as it counts down where we’re staring at ourselves first and so we’re always very giggly right at the beginning.
So I’m going to just stop saying sorry for that because now you guys can just assume that we’re going to be giggling when the podcast-
Paul: Yeah, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Jacquelyn: But today we have me, Jacquelyn and Paul on the podcast. We’re going to be talking about last week’s issue, which I will go through briefly now.
So Paul had a cover story about a potential new cancer moonshot and obviously that’s a very loaded word in our field, but I will let Paul walk through what that looks like. And there’s, not a story, but a little bit of a thing to walk through behind the scenes on that story as well.
And then we had our second story was a conversation with Marcel van den Brink from City of Hope, which was related to story one. He talks about where the field is at in microbiome research and why this quote unquote, “moonshot?”.
I don’t even know if I said that. Geez, sorry. Story one was a potential new cancer moonshot focused on the microbiome, which is obviously the buzzword. There’s a lot of, again, like I said, context to talk about.
And then our story three was a hearing where not only NCI Director Letai, but the other NIH leaders appeared before the Senate, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that’s focused on HHS and others, but HHS.
And they talked about basically, the budget last year, payouts of grants, contracts, et cetera. They talked about… They had a whole discussion and it was pretty interesting just broadly, but the neat thing for us, I think, was that we’ve been seeing that oncology and the cancer world at a federal level has been getting off weirdly easy with things.
And the budgets request, it was the only institute and center in NIH that had a raise when the rest saw a cut again in the budget request, so not necessarily anything stable or certain yet.
But we just have this weird thing that’s happening where NCI is getting off and that definitely continued where Letai certainly got off with pretty chummy, easy questions.
People were asking about NCI designation in their rural states. It felt very nice and conversational, whereas the rest of the hearing was quite contentious. So worth checking out.
Also, a lot of, like I said, important things were discussed that is of interest to our field, so indirect cost caps, et cetera, forward funding, things like that.
And then we had a story that originally started as a cancer policy, but it became bigger as they do. It was that two USPSTF leaders were fired by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. And this USPSTF question has been something we’ve been covering for a while, so please go read that story.
But basically, it’s just yet another incident of destabilizing this really incredible supposedly or intended to be independent group, federal group that is now becoming rudderless and a little bit… It’s just a little scary because we can’t really replace the USPSTF.
And then we had a guest editorial that was incredible. It was about a neuro-oncologist who talks about in a very personal way. It’s not a typical… It’s a very personal narrative story. It’s not necessarily newsy as much and it’s talking about, it’s him, the neuro-oncologist navigating the reality of his father’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment.
And just we’ve heard this story, I think, in different ways, but it’s always so important to bring them up again where an oncologist, even though they are such an expert in treatment and everything, once they are put in either the patient or the caregiver position, their understanding of the reality of their patients really irrevocably changes in ways that I don’t think that they could necessarily, anybody could imagine.
So it’s just, like I said, I say this in almost all of our podcasts, anytime we can say it is that whenever we have a human story, a patient story to recenter us, we like to publish it.
And then the last thing I’ll just say is that Cancer Policy had a story that’s trending and I just think I want to mention it that FDA’s acting drug chief, acting vaccines chief and chief of staff all were ousted in the wake of former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigning last week or two weeks ago.
And one, I wanted to bring that up because it seems clear that our readers care about it. It’s one of our trending stories. And also just in the context of the USPSTF story, we have, I think in this one issue alone, five federal HHS officials either stepping down or… Well, yeah, maybe that’s too broad of a category, but just leadership shakeups at HHS.
Yeah, that’s it. So Paul, let’s talk about positive things where things are moving. Yes.
Paul: Yeah. It’s kind of interesting as when you look at it all together, that whole issue, which by the way, we always just let the news shape the stories and it shaped the issue so we had no control over what was going to go in. The gods-
Jacquelyn: If only, right?
Paul: Yeah. Well, no, we wouldn’t want to. We would have a very different job description.
Jacquelyn: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Who would be called?
Paul: God, yeah?
Jacquelyn: Sounds good.
Paul: Yeah. Well, the gods. But the interesting thing to me is seeing the contrast between the FDA story and the NCI story, because the FDA, you could see the wheels coming off that thing for months and months and months.
And in fact, the minute… You could see it. For some reason, the wheels have not come off NCI and the wheels are very much on and, in fact, it’s moving forward. I don’t know the story beyond maybe it might be luck of the draw. It could be just as simple as that.
And by the way, this kind of thing has happened in previous administrations too, not precisely in the same way. Some agencies have done really well and some agencies have gone into very unpleasant spaces.
But this was interesting and actually, I want to compliment you on your story about Tony Letai’s testimony because everybody was hands-on, kid gloves, other people got beat up as normal. It’s just the legislative process. Kick as much as you want. Take a number.
Jacquelyn: As I was listening to it, I was kind of expecting we’ve covered, or honestly, Claire has really been the hearing person, hearing coverager.
Paul: The hearing coverager. Sounds like a forager. Rhymes at least, which is appropriate.
Jacquelyn: Yes, literally. Oh my gosh. Yes. She has foraged into the hearing world. And so we’ve covered it and they’ve just been… I mean, this year, to be frank, and again, maybe this is just my naivete and youngness coming up, but this year it seems-
Paul: Youth.
Jacquelyn: Youth. Wow, there you go. I get it. Well, I didn’t mean youth as like a positive… Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Point taken.
Paul: Your Englishing is getting very interesting today. What did you do [inaudible 00:08:36] again?
Jacquelyn: I’m drinking my coffee now. Hopefully it will get better as this podcast goes on. No promises though.
Paul: The drinkerizing.
Jacquelyn: I’m sipping. No, that’s a correct word. Oh my gosh.
Paul: Oh my God.
Jacquelyn: Wow, bad.
Paul: That’s good.
Jacquelyn: Okay, so-
Paul: We’re moving in the right direction.
Jacquelyn: Just like it’s yay. So NCI’s Letai was, he was there and I was expecting him to face the same thing that I have seen Kennedy face or about Bhattacharya, et cetera. And to be fair, at that hearing, Bhattacharya got hard questions. And also to be fair, I think he handled them pretty gracefully.
It was a contentious hearing that brought up these important questions. But the thing that really made me not realize, but see, I guess that, wait, this is a little weird that NCI… Not weird, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but you know what I mean?
It’s notable that NCI is being having, again, like you said, almost kid gloves where Senator Durbin brought up the vaping conversation. We had two stories about vaping and Marty Makary last week and basically, you guys can go read that.
That’s a whole thing. It’s a complicated story that has nuance, but basically, the lay interpretation of it is that, oh my gosh, fruit flavor vapes are more available to children. And that is, again, not the full story, but functionally for what I’m about to say, that’s what it is.
And Senator Durbin brought that up to the panel and he only asked Bhattacharya. Letai did not have to talk about it, which I thought was really interesting because it is a very, not only is it a cancer problem or an oncology problem, Senator Durbin knew that it was an oncology problem.
He brought up the fact that it’s so related to, lung cancer was the thing that he brought up. And again, in the bad way, not in the nuanced, complicated way where vaping can actually help people who are already addicted to cigarettes, maybe move off them.
That’s the other side of things. But it was just so interesting to me that Letai wasn’t asked to speak on that when it was so cancer related.
And Bhattacharya, like I said, handled it pretty well. It’s again, a weird conversation because that was really an FDA decision. And so Bhattacharya doesn’t really have any say or anything to do with that necessarily, but he handled it, I think, pretty, like I said, gracefully.
But yeah, I don’t know, maybe that’s me reading too far into it, but in the context of everything else, it was like, “Oh, interesting.”
Paul: No, he wasn’t even asked what’s the payout rate, which is interesting because we had that information. It was in the story, but it was not asked on the Hill.
Jacquelyn: I know.
Paul: What?
Jacquelyn: I don’t know. It’s so weird.
Paul: It’s really odd because your story contained more information than the hearing relevant-
Jacquelyn: That’s true.
Paul: … to us, which is fine, which is your job. Yeah?
Jacquelyn: Yeah. But still it’s interesting because it is-
Paul: Yeah, because we’re looking at this thing. “Wait, why didn’t they even ask that?” Because I know it’s a question that’s discussed on Capitol Hill because my sources call me. What in the world? And nobody asked. Nobody asked maybe because then you don’t ask when you know the answer or whatever.
Jacquelyn: Yeah, maybe that’s true. Yeah, that’s a good point. And to be fair, I mean, I don’t know if this really is fair, this is just my… But Letai is still relatively new and so maybe they’re being nice. I don’t know. That’s probably what, it’s conjecture, but, yeah. Anyway, let’s talk about-
Paul: Let’s go back a little bit more because it’s actually could be an interesting question because, I mean, I’ve covered a lot of NCI directors and some NCI directors make really good targets. People want to kick them on Capitol Hill and other people don’t. They don’t.
It’s just why? And I think Letai is just lucky to be one of the people who our legislators don’t want to kick, which is a good hire, I guess. I’m sure it is.
Jacquelyn: It’s true, yeah.
Paul: But that is what we witnessed and it was noteworthy.
Jacquelyn: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I know I did hijack the conversation.
Paul: Yeah, no, hijack away.
Jacquelyn: Let’s hear about the symposium, the moonshot symposium. I feel like that’s the… Because I didn’t even really give the once over on that. Do you want to talk about-
Paul: Yeah, nobody really expected to hear the word moonshot when they went there.
Jacquelyn: Well, let’s see where, because, I think, I’m not sure I actually said what it was.
Paul: City of Hope put together a symposium on the microbiome and the objective of the symposium, which was meticulously organized, big thing, political, was to bring together scientists.
And by the way, my story does not contain any science, it was just policy, but there was science being discussed and it was all policy, policy, policy. And RFK Jr. was giving the keynote and in this keynote he just said moonshot on the microbiome.
But the objective of this whole thing was to start a new microbiome program that would do a massive amount of clinical, large clinical studies in cancer specifically. As well as I guess other things.
As it happens, you can argue with RFK Jr. and we do about all manner of things, but in this case, I don’t think there are many people in mainstream science who would disagree that this is an important area of science.
And then when he used the word moonshot, which by the way, rhymes with another M word, which is money-
Jacquelyn: Rhymes.
Paul: … or at least that’s what we think.
Jacquelyn: Yeah. Well, yeah.
Paul: Yeah. I’m not sure I know what a moonshot is, by the way. Do you know what moonshot it?
Jacquelyn: Well, because our readers of The Cancer Letter will be very, that’s like a trigger word, but the podcast people might not necessarily… Listeners might not necessarily understand the heaviness of the word moonshot. I feel like it requires a little bit of a history lesson, right?
Paul: Yeah. Well, we can go through it if you want.
Jacquelyn: Yeah. I feel like that would be really helpful, honestly, and interesting.
Paul: Yeah. I think the whole term probably should be abandoned unless… But because the moonshot, the actual moonshot-
Jacquelyn: Yeah, the original.
Paul: … the JFK Moonshot, not the RFK Moonshot, Junior Moonshot, the big moonshot.
Jacquelyn: With the actual moon, the lunar-
Paul: The moon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the actual moon at the other end of the moonshot at the business end of the moonshot. So that one was really a series of complex engineering problems. The science was not really an issue there as much in terms of what needed to be done. It was engineering, engineering, application, application, some science.
But primarily it was that and huge challenges, but not something like cancer, which is where the science hasn’t been done, needs to continue to be done.
So when people say, “Oh, we’re going to do a moonshot,” what they really want to be saying is something like, “We are going to project manage this beast, and we’re going to emphasize certain kinds of scientific research.”
And that’s actually a good thing, but, I think, calling it the moonshot is a little bit, it’s like what? The A-bomb as well was also an engineering, the Manhattan Project. And that’s the language that comes to us from 1971, from even before 1971 and the National Cancer Act.
American Exceptionalism, all this, if we do it, we do it. And National Cancer Act of 1971 is an absolutely wonderful document which does not contain the word moonshot, does not-
Jacquelyn: Well, should we talk about the first cancer moonshot?
Paul: I don’t know what is the first-
Jacquelyn: Or the only, I guess.
Paul: People have been using that language. I’ve heard that bandied about often, but I mean, Andy Van Eschenbach was trying to set up a moonshot.
Jacquelyn: Well, there is a successful Cancer Moonshot. Now I’m learning here.
Paul: I don’t know what’s successful. I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I think we would need to actually look at it very carefully-
Jacquelyn: Okay, yeah.
Paul: … to see what is an actual moonshot and what is a success. MD Anderson tried to launch a moonshot and I’m not even sure I understand what that was. There’s also Patrick Soon-Shiong was moonshooting. And in fact, there was a point where MD Anderson was suing Soon-Shiong for his moonshot, which was covered amply in The Cancer Letter.
And if anybody wants to do a little dive into history, it was a lawsuit that was abandoned, but they had a change of leadership. And then HHS borrowed-
Jacquelyn: Yeah, that’s right.
Paul: … the moonshot receiving, getting the rights from MD Anderson-
Jacquelyn: Oh, my gosh.
Paul: … for the Biden Moonshot, which-
Jacquelyn: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of was the Biden Moonshot. I thought that was the only one.
Paul: Well, I’m not sure. In that case, I’m not sure that moonshot really got NCI the money that everybody was preparing to receive. So I don’t know what a moonshot is.
Jacquelyn: I know. I thought that that conversation was going to go a little bit of a different way. I mean, it’s interesting, but that is interesting, I feel like, to contextualize.
When I was reading your story, it was like, “Oh, Biden,” and to be honest, JFK Moonshot were the things in my mind, but I didn’t realize there was all of this other history and context with the phrase.
But it’s interesting because it’s like you’re saying, what does this then mean that Kennedy is saying moonshot?
Paul: You know what it means? It means that somebody cares and somebody wants to make a political statement based on it, which is fine, which is why we elect politicians.
Jacquelyn: Yeah. And I will say for what it’s worth, I mean, this is me just putting my opinion out there, so it could be wrong, just Jacquelyn Cobb.
But I find it interesting because, and again, I’m coming from being a want to be wellness girly. In theory, in my soul, I would love to be an RFK person if it was really evidence-based and equitable, all of these things.
But to me, the microbiome has been this MAHA adjacent wellness topic that happens to have a really strong scientific foundation. So to me, this moonshot, whatever you want to call it, but this push for a microbiome research feels to me like, “Oh, there happens to be this …”
Almost what you said, Paul, there happens to be this overlap where this is something that the MAHA, RFK people find interesting and find important and it’s preventative.
It’s almost, not holistic, but it’s less pharmaceutical, which is, I think, an important point that you talked about, why NCI has to be involved is that there’s not going to necessarily be pharmaceutical products that promise profits afterwards, like the typical cancer drug pipeline.
We need federal or basic, I guess, research into this. I’ve read that in your story, right, Paul? I’m not making that up.
Paul: Yep. No, it’s all in there. Yeah, yeah.
Jacquelyn: So it’s just interesting to me where it almost feels like the field is seeing, “Okay, we have this MAHA leader who wants to focus on this type of stuff, what’s the highest return subtopic that will actually help cancer patients?”
So that we’re not necessarily abandoning HPV vaccines and then not having something else to help cancer outcomes in general. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
Paul: Yeah. Well, I just-
Jacquelyn: Like I say, this is just my opinion.
Paul: No, no, no, that’s fine. I mean, I just basically, looked at it in isolation for the story because that was there, that’s what was there.
So what I wanted to do to just separate the politics from the science is sit down with Marcel van den Brink and that’s why we did this. Who is president of City of Hope, Los Angeles and National Medical Center and he’s also a microbiome researcher who knows what, he can walk you through the history of it and the science of it.
And he is one of the reasons that this was done at City of Hope. So a lot of people who are our readers, a lot of our readers want to know where the money is going and which programs to emphasize.
So it was really important to sit down with him and just kind of have him walk me through the science of it and have everybody else walk. So it’s part of the story package, it’s not just pure politics, political coverage.
But as someone who’s had a lot of training in science, you know that, yeah, this is real science, this is not BS.
Jacquelyn: Sorry, I’m going to-
Paul: Cool, yeah.
Jacquelyn: My coffee’s coming in.
Paul: Yes, yes.
Jacquelyn: What was interesting, and this was just a throwaway comment, I don’t necessarily want to read into it, but Letai at the hearing did mention that the microbiome could be driving…
Again, one of the hypotheses, I’m going to try to hedge just as much as he did, but could be driving the increased incidence and mortality of early onset colorectal cancer, which is, of course, I think probably in the lay population, one of the most prevalent oncology news trends.
I feel like everybody knows about this early onset colorectal cancer vibe and that’s what, I don’t know, it’s just really interesting. Because I feel like in our reporting of this, and I think honestly, Sara and I talked about this on a recent podcast when she was doing reporting on this.
Or when we had the early onset colorectal cancer issue, we had three stories where we’re all just waiting with bated breath to find out what is driving this trend because we’re all like, “What is it?”
And it was interesting because Letai, again, I haven’t had the time to personally go review the literature yet. We’ve done our reporting on it, but it’s always been it might be diet related, it might be obesity related, something micro plastic, something, because it just feels intuitively related to what you eat and consume.
And he said, “It seems like it’s probably not obesity related and that maybe it might be microbiome related.” And I just thought that was really interesting because it felt like very new information to me that I’ve been waiting for and it happened to be related to what you were talking about.
So that, again, just a throwaway comment. Not necessarily throwaway, that’s too harsh.
Paul: Not necessarily throwaway because antibiotics are everywhere-
Jacquelyn: In our meats, yeah.
Paul: … in the food we eat, and so people do lose a lot of their microbiome-
Jacquelyn: Absolutely.
Paul: … for no reason at all. So that’s probably… And its role is not defined its role in cancer, which is what their rationale is for this clinical research, call it the moonshot, call it the Mars mission or call it whatever.
Jacquelyn: Yeah, Mars mission. That’s a good one. You should tell them. We probably take that up, honestly. I like that.
Paul: Yeah, that’s right to Pluto. I mean, I don’t care about the cosmos here.
Jacquelyn: You could be the marketing people for the administration.
Paul: It doesn’t interest me that part of it.
Jacquelyn: Yes, yes.
Paul: I mean-
Jacquelyn: It’s not the point. What you call it doesn’t, it’s what actually is done.
Paul: Zero difference. So that’s kind of where… Yeah, that was a very interesting thing for me to cover. And it also had an immediate impact on my grocery list.
Jacquelyn: Wait, okay, what? Are you getting kombucha and kimchi and stuff?
Paul: I’ve always had kombucha. And I’ve been kimchi deficient for a few weeks, so I went out and bought a big jar and some refrigerator stinking up the thing, but it’s wonderful stuff.
Jacquelyn: Making me hungry. Got to go make some kimchi fried rice is my favorite.
Paul: And then just looking at what’s in the chicken I buy, is it antibiotic free or is it not? And those things are really simple to do and it won’t hurt.
Jacquelyn: Yeah. Hopefully we’ll see. Got to see the clinical trials, right? But yes.
Paul: But it would be really nice to know what actual role is and that is a real scientific question that needs to be asked. The reason it was clearly something the administration or at least Kennedy wants to do.
He showed up, he showed up in LA-
Jacquelyn: Yeah, he was there physically
Paul: … for that physically. The only reason more cancer center directors and, presumably, Letai weren’t there is because of the cancer center directors meeting that took place at the same time. Yeah. John Carpten wasn’t there, he was in Washington. [inaudible 00:28:19]-
Jacquelyn: Who’s City of Hope?
Paul: … City of Hope Cancer Center as is the case. And so I could only see one other cancer center director there and that was Peter Pisters.
Jacquelyn: Who’s quoted in the story.
Paul: Yeah, but mostly they were in Washington.
Jacquelyn: Interesting. Well, hopefully some more reporting coming out of that as well. Yeah, I mean, is there anything else, Paul, that we… I feel like we had a nice sweeping discussion of last week’s issue, but I don’t want to-
Paul: No. The next thing is what happens? So there was this big political thing, moonshot discussion. Yeah, all this moonshot stuff. And so what do you do next? What happens next is, I think, in the fall there’s going to be an NCI meeting that will be trying to define those criteria, I mean, those goals and, I guess, what the moonshot, whatever the moonshot is is going to be.
Presumably it’s new money, you would hope it’s new money coming in from somewhere and that somewhere is usually called Congress. So yeah, you would hope that that would be a part of it as opposed to some kind of a redistribution of existing funds, but we don’t know anything at all. And we will know. Nobody should lose sleep over this.
Jacquelyn: Not yet, at least.
Paul: It’s pretty interesting. And we’ll be there to cover it because it’s clearly a huge, huge, huge story to do, so here we are.
Jacquelyn: Yeah. I’m excited. And I think honestly, this is an editorial meeting pitch, Paul. I would love at some point to do a really, really deep dive into the science of the microbiome. That’s my editorial pitch.
Paul: Well, let’s have an editorial meeting right here with the whole world watching. Just do it. Okay? What would be really interesting to do here, I have this right here, the workshop or symposium at City of Hope.
I don’t know if they’re going to set that up on the internet, but there were really cool presentations about the science of the microbiome that exists and it was selected very nicely by, I guess, by Marcel van den Brink and a whole bunch of people from City of Hope. And they were from all over the place and all of that was really interesting.
The one thing that those studies had in common is that they were smallish studies. So 28 patients here, 14 patients there, but they said something really interesting, which, of course, often that happens.
Jacquelyn: Yes, yes, yes. So true. So true.
Paul: Yeah. So what you would probably, you could do is, and you can bring a team together on this one is do a story about what the science was and that is worth doing.
I think there will be a replay of some sort at that NCI symposium workshop rather that’s going to be done in September-ish. And we could probably work with NCI to find out whom they’re going to invite. That’s another way to do it.
Jacquelyn: There you go.
Paul: I think it wouldn’t be wrong to put it all together before the NCI symposium, or excuse me, the NCI workshop so that the questions are going to be raised about it. And you can probably do it as a story about what kind of science should be done. I tried to do that and I think I did that-
Jacquelyn: You did, you did.
Paul:… in my conversation with-
Jacquelyn: Certainly.
Paul: … Doctor van den Brink.
Jacquelyn: Well, yeah, I’m not going to get us on… We’re at a pretty long podcast already, but he did talk about-
Paul: Yeah, but we’re having fun.
Jacquelyn: I know, we are having fun. I’m enjoying it.
Paul: I’m enjoying it too.
Jacquelyn: It was really interesting where Marcel van den Brink talked about the Microbiome Project One and Human Microbiome Project Two. And just to circle back to what you said at the beginning of this talk, Paul, where it’s like these are interesting, but it’s not in oncology. ‘.
And so it’s like, you have bigger-ish projects, but they’re not focused on oncology. And then you have smaller projects where we do have small trials looking at… Yeah, trials, I guess studies looking at cancer patients, but we don’t have big numbers in those.
So, I think, there’s certainly a gap in research. But honestly, more than anything, Paul, when I say I want to learn about the science, I want to learn about the basic science. I want to know the mechanism of action. That’s what I’m interested in.
So we can pause our exclusive editorial meeting. I’ll keep chatting but-
Paul: We will keep chatting.
Jacquelyn: … not for everybody else.
Paul: Yeah. In fact, if anybody has ideas about how to proceed, call us.
Jacquelyn: Email me or yes, call me. Different generation.
Paul: A call is easier, probably.
Jacquelyn: Yes, you can call me.
Paul: And just talk about it. But yes, an overview of the science would be definitely worthwhile and that is not what I did.
Jacquelyn: Well, not yet. It wasn’t necessary yet. It was the political thing happened first. But yes, this is why you’re such a lovely editor, Paul. Anybody listening, I said, “I want to do this.” He goes, “Yes.”
Paul: Just do it.
Jacquelyn: So behind the scenes on many levels, oncology, The Cancer Letter, Congress, blah, blah, blah.
Paul: Just do it.
Jacquelyn: All right, well, thank you, Paul.
Paul: When things are obvious, I mean, that’s the beauty of this field is that you’re never short on stories and there’s always massive amounts of things happening and they’re always very, very interesting and really almost always the people you get to talk to are really cool.
Jacquelyn: Yeah. And so smart. So smart. Yes.
Paul: Enough to give me a complex. All right. Well, bye-bye.
Jacquelyn: It’s a wonderful time to be a journalist. Come on.
Paul: We have a great job.
Jacquelyn: Yes. Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you, Paul.
Paul: Thank you, Jacquelyn. Bye-bye.
