At the end of her first day on the job as CEO of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, W. Kimryn Rathmell reflected on her decision to take the CEO job at the third largest cancer hospital in the United States.
Pfizer External Research & Grants’ “Improving Breast Cancer Quality of Care via Meaningful Capacity Building in Sub-Saharan Africa,” powered by EveryGrant, has announced grants totaling more than $900,000 for addressing inequities and improving the quality of breast cancer care in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It started innocuously enough. I looked in the mirror and noticed a pigmented area on my scalp just into the hairline. Like many patients, thoughts started running through my head: “Maybe it’s nothing.” Looking at my Outlook calendar, it was packed morning-to-night with meetings, patients, and travel, so I decided I would get that spot checked out the minute I had “time.”
With advances in treatment and screening for earlier detection, oncologists have improved cancer survival rates dramatically. That is excellent news, but the surging number of survivors means it is increasingly important for providers to focus more diligently on what patients need to thrive after treatment.
In the morning of May 28, presumably before turning off the lights and closing the office door, someone at the now defunct NCI Office of Communications and Public Liaision decided to post a farewell message to the cancer community.
The message, posted on multiple social media accounts, read:
We’re taking a pause here - but not on the mission.
Thanks for being a part of our community. While we won’t be actively posting, you can still find trusted cancer updates via @NIH as NCI’s work continues every day.
The story doesn’t end here.
Indeed, the entire communications arm of NCI has been eliminated (The Cancer Letter, May 23, May 9, 2025).
The communications functions of institutes and centers are being centralized within NIH.
Later in the day, someone with access to the NCI social media accounts responded by accusing the original unknown poster of animus toward the Trump administration.
The post read:
The recent post from the NCI account was done without authorization by a career official in an attempt to undermine the Trump administration.
Let’s be clear: there is no pause in NCI’s communications and NCI will continue to share vital cancer research with the public.
The Trump administration remains fully committed to supporting gold standard cancer research.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he is considering a ban on government scientists publishing their work in top-tier medical journals, which he says are abed with pharmaceutical companies.
President Trump has issued an executive order, titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” which “ensures that agencies practice data transparency, acknowledge relevant scientific uncertainties, are transparent about the assumptions and likelihood of scenarios used, approach scientific findings objectively, and communicate scientific data accurately.”
The U.S. State Department has ordered U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to halt appointments for new student visas as the Trump administration prepares to increase social media vetting for all foreign students applying to study in the U.S.
A recent report from the Make America Healthy Again Commission cites ultraprocessed foods, electromagnetic radiation, and herbicides as possible reasons for increased cancer incidence in children.
On May 30, an international coalition announced the launch of CAR T Vision, a coalition that aims to unite stakeholders around the shared ambition that every eligible patient should have the opportunity for cure with CAR T-cell therapy.
Nadeem R. Abu-RustumLouis Burt NaborsMichael J. StylerJames ThompsonErin HeslerNadeem R. Abu-Rustum, Louis Burt Nabors, Michael J. Styler, and James Thompson were recognized by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network as its 2025 awardees who “go above and beyond to define and advance quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care and prevention so all people can live better lives.”
The University of Kansas Cancer Center broke ground on the future site of a new complex on May 22 that will bring research and patient care into one area for the first time in KU Cancer Center’s history.
Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, but public awareness of the connection remains strikingly low in the U.S., with just 40% of American adults recognizing alcohol as a cancer risk, according to a new study from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Investigator-initiated EFTISARC-NEO phase II trial evaluating eftilagimod alfa (efti) with radiotherapy plus Keytruda (pembrolizumab) in the neoadjuvant setting for resectable soft tissue sarcoma has met its primary endpoint.
Breathing in wildfire pollution may make it harder for people with lung cancer to survive, according to a new study from UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers.
Researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified a new biomarker, TTF-1, that was predictive of survival outcomes for patients with advanced KRAS G12C-mutated non-small cell lung cancer, following treatment with the KRAS targeted therapy, sotorasib.
New research out of VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center is the first to suggest that a tumor-driving gene known as AEG-1 actively regulates the inflammation responsible for causing chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, a common and painful side effect of cancer treatment. Eliminating the function of this gene using targeted therapies could become a critical strategy for managing a debilitating side effect experienced by many cancer patients.
FDA accepted a new drug application and granted priority review designation for the investigational compound sevabertinib (BAY 2927088), an oral, small molecule, tyrosine kinase inhibitor, for the treatment of adult patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors have activating human epidermal growth factor receptors 2 (HER2) (ERBB2) mutations and who have received a prior systemic therapy.
Alligator Bioscience on May 26 announced that the European Commission granted orphan drug designation to HLX22, an anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody, for the treatment of gastric cancer. HLX22 is being developed by Shanghai Henlius Biotech, Inc. under a sublicense from AbClon, Inc., which had previously licensed the antibody from Alligator.
The Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee held its first session since President Trump’s inauguration, with a two-day, back-to-back marathon meeting, signaling a return to business at FDA after significant upheaval at the agency.
In two back-to-back, all-day meetings, the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee considered four thorny applications that the agency appeared to have been saving up as a result of the pause in activity that followed President Trump’s return to office.
Credit: Jonah Elkowitz/ShutterstockThat President Biden was diagnosed with prostate cancer is certainly unfortunate news, but it should come as no surprise. One in eight men in the U.S. will be told they have prostate cancer at some point in their lifetime: more than 300,000 new diagnoses occur annually, and the absolute numbers are rising.
True innovation in healthcare requires us to look beyond the obvious. For years, DNA sequencing has been the key pillar of precision medicine, offering insights into disease predispositions, mechanisms, and diagnosis that inform treatment.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology and Google Cloud have developed a tool called the ASCO Guidelines Assistant to help oncologists parse through and interpret clinical practice guidelines.
As the leaders of the Public Affairs & Marketing Network set out to develop a strategic plan four years ago, they had to confront one surprising challenge.
In the rapidly evolving field of oncology, the integration of big data and artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our approach to cancer research and treatment. The future of precision oncology requires integrating computational approaches with clinical practice.
The Neuroendocrine Tumor Research Foundation has joined the Cancer History Project to preserve the history of research, care, and survivorship of this uncommon disease.
On May 21, staff members of NCI’s dissolved Office of Communications and Public Liaison and friends gathered at the house of Peter Garrett and Ken Crerar.
NCI’s Cancer Information Highlights bulletin, a section of NCI’s Weekly Digest Bulletin that informs readers of research updates related to cancer causes, prevention, screening, treatment, and coping, will no longer be published due to restructuring and reductions in force at HHS.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” this week which included drastic, $715 billion cuts to Medicaid that will result in at least 8.6 million people losing health insurance coverage, including cancer patients and survivors.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary held a roundtable of independent scientific experts to discuss the safety and necessity of talc as an additive to food, drugs, and cosmetic products.
FDA—under the leadership of cyber-iconoclast and new director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Vinay Prasad—is taking a new approach to COVID-19 vaccines.
In the ongoing escalation of the feud between Harvard University and the Trump White House has imperiled hundreds of research grants at Harvard’s medical school.
A three-judge federal appeals court has lifted a lower court order that blocked the federal government from enacting President Trump’s executive order to end collective bargaining by workers at more than a dozen federal agencies.
Legislation aimed at increasing access to breast and cervical cancer screening was introduced May 22 in the U.S. Senate. The bipartisan Screening for Communities to Receive Early and Equitable Needed Services, or SCREENS, for Cancer Act would reauthorize the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, or NBCCEDP, for fiscal years 2026 through 2030.
The Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University appointed Shalini Kulasingam as the founding director of the school’s newly established Center for Cancer Prevention and Control, effective July 1.
NRG Oncology, an NCI National Clinical Trials Network group focused on improving outcomes for adults with cancer through multi-center clinical research, recently announced new chair and vice chair appointments to the NRG NCI Community Oncology Research Program Cancer Prevention & Control Committee.
NYU Langone announced on May 21 the creation of the Mignone Women’s Health Collaborative, building upon the system’s health care services for women and deepening coordination between specialists who work together to treat women at every stage of life.
On May 21, the governing body of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas approved 61 grants totaling more than $93 million. The grants support cancer research and prevention projects across the entire spectrum of CPRIT’s mission, including CPRIT Scholar recruitment grants, a wide array of evidence-based prevention programs, and funding for early-stage companies developing promising new treatments for cancer.
The Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025 provides $650M in funding for the CDMRP. Congress provided further guidance for CDMRP program-level funding, including funding for the Prostate Cancer Research Program. The FY25 PCRP intends to support innovative, high-impact prostate cancer research.
The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation is now accepting letters of inquiry for the 2025-2026 funding cycle of NIHCM Foundation’s Research Grant program. We will be awarding a total of $500,000 in grants to support innovative, independent, investigator-initiated research that has the potential to inform managed care organizations, policymakers, and related stakeholders to improve the affordability and quality of U.S. health care.
An artificial intelligence technique for detecting DNA fragments shed by tumors and circulating in a patient’s blood, developed by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center investigators, could help clinicians more quickly identify and determine if pancreatic cancer therapies are working.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions investigated for the first time in cancer the association between two sources of genetic variation: germline or inherited structural variation, which refers to large differences in the DNA sequence, and DNA methylation, which is when genes are turned on or off without altering the DNA code.
A Johns Hopkins Medicine-led research team has identified a recurrent frameshift mutation, called F722fs, in the MMS22L gene among men of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry that is associated with a higher risk of prostate cancer and increased sensitivity to a specific anticancer therapy.
A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has identified flavonoids, natural compounds found in plants, that are toxic to bladder cancer cells cultured in the lab.
Researchers at The Wistar Institute have identified a previously unknown mechanism by which viruses can reprogram mitochondrial structure to silence immune responses and ensure successful viral reproduction.
Mayo Clinic researchers have established the world’s first biobank of human salivary gland tissue-organoids to study chronic dry mouth, or xerostomia, an agonizing side effect of damaged salivary glands that affects millions.
FDA has approved Avmapki Fakzynja Co-Pack (avutometinib capsules; defactinib tablets) for the treatment of adult patients with KRAS-mutated recurrent low-grade serous ovarian cancer who received prior systemic therapy. Avmapki Fakzynja Co-Pack is the first and only FDA-approved medicine for this disease.
Arineta, a provider of cardiovascular imaging solutions, announced that its SpotLight Duo cardiac CT scanner has received 510(k) clearance from FDA for low-dose lung cancer screening. This clearance allows providers to use a single ultra-fast CT platform for both cardiac and lung imaging and diagnostics, delivering more complete care to high-risk patients.
Wafik El-Deiry, director of the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University, joined The Cancer Letter’s weekly podcast to discuss his recent guest editorial—and confirmed his candidacy for director of the National Cancer Institute.
Thomas J. Lynch Jr. and Howard A. “Skip” Burris III lead two institutions that couldn’t be more different—an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center on one side of the country and a for-profit research enterprise on the other—but they stay up at nights worrying about the same thing.
In back-to-back congressional hearings earlier this week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that the massive staff and budget cuts over which he has presided during his nearly four months on the job as well as even bigger cuts still looming on the horizon are a part of a single plan.
Natalie Phelps, a 43-year-old mother of two, has stage 4 colorectal cancer. She has become a central figure in the controversy over the dysfunction the Trump administration’s RIFs and budget cuts have brought to NIH.
Last November, the American public voted on America First causes, which include the greatest scientific discovery and achievement enterprise in the world: The National Institutes of Health. NIH has made America first in biomedical science for the past century.
For those who have spent their entire careers in oncology, cancer is our world. We see it as something to be studied, understood, controlled, cured, or prevented.
City of Hope researchers at AACR.City of Hope presented more than 74 sessions at this year’s American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in Chicago, highlighting breakthroughs in diagnostics, treatment options and AI-powered precision medicine.
In a new online exhibit, the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society at the University of Alabama explores past and present relationships between cigarette manufacturers and universities.
Before two consecutive congressional hearings on the Trump administration’s “skinny budget” proposal on May 14, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, released a report assessing the administration’s impact on biomedical research.
On May 12, President Trump signed an executive order directing the administration to communicate most-favored-nation drug price targets to pharmaceutical manufacturers for sales in the United States.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce budget reconciliation bill, which includes attacks on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage and fails to extend ACA tax credits, would increase the number of uninsured people by at least 13.7 million.
Harvard University filed an amended lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to add two more federal agencies as defendants and to address the administration’s widening efforts to cut the university’s federal funding—now targeting over $2.6 billion and all future grants.
UT Southwestern Medical Center broke ground May 12 on a $177 million radiation oncology campus that will provide advanced therapies for patients of Fort Worth, TX, the nation’s 12th-largest city.
RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute, the state’s only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, have opened New Jersey’s first and only freestanding, fully comprehensive cancer hospital (The Cancer Letter, April 25, 2025).
Northwell Health Cancer Institute has appointed Sang Sim, a radiation oncologist, as vice chair of brachytherapy within the Department of Radiation Medicine.
Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan will be honored with the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship’s Public Service Leadership Award at the Igniting Hope Awards Reception held June 26, at the Morrow Hotel in Washington, DC.
OncoHost, together with its partners Heidelberg University Hospital, European Institute of Oncology and Virgen Macarena University Hospital, announced on May 15 that the parties have been awarded a €2.5 million grant from the EIC Transition Program of Horizon Europe.
Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, was named a finalist for the 31st Annual NIHCM Awards in Research and Journalism for her series, “Multi-cancer detection tests fall short of their promises.”
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission awarded over $18 million in grants aimed at accelerating cutting-edge stem cell and regenerative medicine research across Maryland.
Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered that high doses of radiation cause growth in existing metastatic tumors that weren’t directly treated with radiation.
For men who undergo a radical prostatectomy for the treatment of prostate cancer, post-surgery radiation therapy can play a vital role in reducing the risk of recurrence.
Artera, the developer of multimodal artificial intelligence-based prognostic and predictive cancer tests, announced the publication of a validation study in the JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics on Artera’s MMAI model.
Johnson & Johnson MedTech on May 13 announced the U.S. launch of MENTOR MemoryGel Enhance Breast Implants, filling a critical gap in comprehensive breast cancer care for women who have undergone a mastectomy.
According to a recent report, “The Cancer Paradox: Oncologists’ Perspectives on Barriers to Advanced Cancer Care and Recurrence Monitoring,” oncologists believe they are seeing more and more patients with advanced cancers, and that screening barriers are the leading reason why. They worry that current tests may not catch cancer recurrence early enough.
A series of preclinical studies show that a new compound, SHP1705, targets circadian clock proteins hijacked by glioblastoma stem cells, impairing the cancer cells’ ability to survive and grow.
FDA granted accelerated approival to Emrelis (telisotuzumab vedotin-tllv) for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic, non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer with high c-Met protein overexpression who have received a prior systemic therapy.
RyboDyn, Inc. announced on May 15 the expansion of its strategic collaboration with Moffitt Cancer Center, a global leader in cancer care and research.
FDA approved Zynyz (retifanlimab-dlwr), a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting programmed death receptor-1, in combination with carboplatin and paclitaxel (platinum-based chemotherapy) for the first-line treatment of adult patients with inoperable locally recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal.
The cancer center program of the NCI is a success that is admired not only within the NIH but worldwide. This is due, in large part, to the cancer center review process that has evolved and strengthened over the years.
Vinay Prasad, a MAHA-aligned hematologist-oncologist with an avid cyber following, was named director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, where he will be responsible for the agency’s regulation of vaccines and biologics, including cell and gene therapies.
As the number of cancer survivors in the U.S. continues to rise and the age at diagnosis for some cancers appears to be shifting younger, the need for long-term survivorship care is more urgent than ever.
As the Trump administration reshapes the cancer research enterprise that was built on the foundation of the National Cancer Act of 1971, the Cancer History Project presents an eyewitness account of the impact of this landmark law.
On April 21, investigators with the Women’s Health Initiative were notified that HHS planned to terminate the WHI Regional Center contracts at the end of the current fiscal year (The Cancer Letter, April 20, 2025).
The American Association for Cancer Research called on Congress to stand up in unified opposition to President Trump’s FY2026 budget proposal for NIH, and to instead allocate a robust funding increase to $51.3 billion for the NIH (The Cancer Letter, May 2, 2025).
