The same House appropriators who, with bipartisan resolve, oversaw years of dramatic funding increases for NIH expressed equally bipartisan misgivings about President Joe Biden’s proposal to boost funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health while giving NIH a meager raise—and cutting funds for NCI.
Before any strategy can be formulated for next year’s appropriations, cancer groups must confront the formidable challenge of figuring out how much of President Joe Biden’s vision for cancer research is realistic.
Portage Biotech Inc., NCI, and Stimunity entered a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, under which they will collaborate with NCI’s Center for Cancer Research to advance preclinical and potential clinical development of STING agonists and anti-Receptor for Advanced Glycation End products (RAGE) agents to enhance the efficacy of cancer vaccines developed in the NCI CCR Vaccine Branch.
After nearly five years in the federal government—at both NCI and FDA—Ned Sharpless is stepping down from his position as NCI director.
The NCI Board of Scientific Advisors approved nine new and reissued concepts at a meeting held March 28-29.
On March 31, NCI officially renewed the University of Colorado Cancer Center’s “comprehensive” designation with a strong rating, the best ever received at the CU Cancer Center.
In a move that appears to prioritize biomedical engineering over cancer research, President Joe Biden’s proposal for fiscal year 2023 cuts NCI funding by $199 million, a 2.9% percent cut from the current year’s level.
Worry not, because support for cancer research remains strong, NCI Director Ned Sharpless said, even as the institute stalls in its attempts to increase paylines in fiscal year 2022 and as the White House requests a nearly $200 million cutto the FY23 NCI budget.
The FY22 spending bill increases NCI’s budget by $159 million—but according to NCI officials, this boost isn’t sufficient to raise paylines for R01 grants for established and new investigators.
In support of the reignited Cancer Moonshot’s goal of fostering data sharing in cancer research, the National Cancer Institute has launched the Molecular Characterization Initiative for pediatric tumors (The Cancer Letter, Feb. 4, 2022).
