Jacquelyn Cobb is an associate editor and reporter with The Cancer Letter. She joined the publication in 2022.
Before joining The Cancer Letter, Jacquelyn worked at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a research data specialist in translational gastrointestinal oncology. She graduated with an M.Sc. in precision medicine and biomedical technology as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar in July, 2022.
Jacquelyn graduated from Lafayette College in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and English. During college, she was editor-in-chief of the undergraduate-led research journal,The Journal of Young Investigators. After college, she received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent nine months in Kolkata, India as an English teaching assistant.
Before joining The Cancer Letter, Jacquelyn worked at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a research data specialist in translational gastrointestinal oncology. She graduated with an M.Sc. in precision medicine and biomedical technology as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar in July, 2022.
Jacquelyn graduated from Lafayette College in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and English. During college, she was editor-in-chief of the undergraduate-led research journal,The Journal of Young Investigators. After college, she received a Fulbright Fellowship and spent nine months in Kolkata, India as an English teaching assistant.
Latest Stories
The Directors
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.
Cancer Policy
FDA announced six additional awardees under the Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher pilot program, which aims to accelerate review time for applications that are deemed to be advancing U.S. “national priorities” (The Cancer Letter, Oct. 24, June 20, 2025).
Cancer Policy
The White House Nov. 6 announced a deal with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Co. and Novo Nordisk to expand coverage and reduce prices for their obesity treatments, Zepbound and Wegovy.
Clinical
Following last month’s dismissal of the securities class action complaint against Illumina Inc. and its former spinoff company, GRAIL, the plaintiffs have refiled an amended complaint, keeping the action alive.Â
Regulatory News
New research led by Friends of Cancer Research demonstrates that decreases in circulating tumor DNA after initiation of treatment are associated with improved overall survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with immunotherapy or chemotherapy.
Clinical
Recent results from the PATHFINDER 2 study showed that the addition of GRAIL’s multi-cancer detection test to standard screening led to a seven-fold increase in cancers detected within a year, the company said.
Regulatory News
Bowing to the growing animal rights movement, FDA and NIH have made policy changes to discourage animal testing, instead favoring alternative research models.
Cancer Policy
As of Oct. 1, Medicare no longer covers telehealth visits.
In 1988, Frank McCormick learned with the rest of the field that more than 90% of patients with pancreatic cancer have a mutation in the Kirsten rat sarcoma viral gene.
Cancer Policy
NIH’s new “unified grant funding policy,” is “not political,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said during his remarks at Research!America’s annual National Health Research Forum Sept. 17.
Drugs & Targets
FDA approved Keytruda Qlex (pembrolizumab and berahyaluronidase alfa-pmph) Sept. 19 for subcutaneous injection for adult and pediatric (12 years and older) solid tumor indications approved for the intravenous formulation of pembrolizumab.Â
Cancer Policy
FDA has begun to crack down on direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising.Â
The Directors
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.
Cancer Policy
FDA introduced the Rare Disease Evidence Principles to provide greater speed and predictability in the review of therapies intended to treat rare diseases with very small patient populations with significant unmet medical need and that are driven by a known genetic defect.Â
On Sept. 4, Jay Bhattacharya did something NIH directors rarely do: he appeared before the National Cancer Advisory Board, speaking directly with the NCI advisory board about hot-button policy changes taking place under his leadership at NIH.
Capitol Hill
The House is on track to join the Senate in rejecting the Trump administration’s budget proposal that would cut NIH by $18 billion.
NCI
At the Sept. 4 meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board, NCI Principal Deputy Director Douglas R. Lowy provided an overview of how NCI is weathering the maelstrom of executive orders, policy changes, and funding uncertainties that has come down on federal agencies and research institutes since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
Free
The Government Accountability Office, an independent, non-partisan congressional watchdog agency, found that NIH violated the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 when it cancelled nearly 2,000 research grants in an effort to comply with several of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, including “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing” (The Cancer Letter, Jan 24, 2025).
Free
Brown University has reached an agreement with the Trump administration to restore the university’s federal funding for medical and health sciences research.Â
Free
President Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating that his appointees will review all funding announcements and grant awards to “verify that each grant dollar benefits Americans instead of lining grantees’ pocketbooks or furthering causes that damage America.”
Cancer Policy
A study led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has found that binary (yes/no) voting at the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee can accurately capture the committee members’ perspectives in most cases.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The first large cancer screening/early detection initiative to be launched in 2025—the NCI-funded Vanguard study of multi-cancer detection tests—has started accruing patients through nine sites across the U.S.
Cancer Policy
FY25 paylines drop to 4th percentile—a historic low—as NCI braces for Trump’s FY26 budget cuts
NCI announced that the paylines for R01 grants for established and new investigators are expected to drop to the 4th percentile—a historic low for the institute.
Cancer Policy
It has been more than three months since the Trump Administration froze Columbia University’s NIH funds in an attempt to crack down on “antisemitism.”
Drugs & Targets
FDA July 23 extended the review period for the Biologics License Application for Blenrep (belantamab mafodotin-blmf) combinations for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior line of therapy.Â
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee July 17 recommended against approval of a Blenrep-based regimen for the treatment of relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, citing unacceptable rates of ocular toxicity and overall poor tolerability of the drug.Â
Cancer Policy
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily lifted a lower court’s freeze on the Trump administration’s reductions in force, or RIFs, freeing the government to continue their large-scale restructuring of the federal government.
Cancer Policy
Over 20 scientists whose grants have been canceled by the Trump administration presented posters on their now-terminated work at “The Things We’ll Never Know: A Science Fair of Canceled Grants.”
Cancer Policy
In a move advertised as being in line with FDA’s goal of “radical transparency,” the agency July 10 announced the publication of more than 200 complete response letters.
Cancer Policy
The United States House of Representatives July 3 voted to pass H.R.1, also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” President Trump signed the bill into law July 4 (The Cancer Letter, July 3, 2025).
Clinical
Don’t try to convince Col. Susan Fondy that lymphedema doesn’t merit interest from medical researchers.
Cancer Policy
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a key Senate health leader, June 23 called for the meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to be delayed, citing concerns over the committee members’ lack of directly relevant experience and their potential bias against some vaccines.
As biomedical research at NIH faces an existential threat from the Trump administration, an entrepreneur is winning over allies for what he describes as a “simple idea” that could introduce a massive new infusion of money for innovation in medicine.
Regulatory News
In the first meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, NCI Principal Deputy Director Douglas R. Lowy addressed many of the burning questions the oncology field has for the institute. On indirect costs: NCI will continue to use previously negotiated and approved indirect cost rates, with the exception...
Clinical
Cannabis use disorder is associated with a dramatically increased odds of death within five years of diagnosis in people with colorectal cancer, a recent observational study found.Â
Cancer Policy
NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya “prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” a group of Nobel laureates and over 300 NIH employees wrote in a letter.
Cancer Policy
In November 2024, Bobby Mukkamala was giving a routine talk to a group of physicians and medical students when his language suddenly became garbled. For a minute or two, he stopped making any sense.
Cancer Policy
HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. asserted that under his leadership, FDA will “end the war” against alternative medicine.
Two years ago, Dan Theodorescu made a discovery that could alter biology textbooks: The Y chromosome, widely considered to be a “functional wasteland,” has functions beyond sex determination—and in fact plays a role in cancer biology.Â
Cancer Policy
Booth 10025 became an unlikely crowd magnet at the exhibit hall at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology that ended earlier this week.
Cancer Policy
Nearly 11 million people will become uninsured if reconciliation bill passes as is, CBO report finds
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating the budgetary effects of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was passed in the House May 22.Â
Cancer Policy
Mehmet Oz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Marty Makary, Jayanta Bhattacharya, and Vinayak Prasad at an FDA Roundtable on Cell and Gene Therapy, June 5.Speaking at an FDA Roundtable on Cell and Gene Therapy, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary questioned the construct of “levels of evidence” as artificial and dogmatic, saying that n-of-1 “stories” can drive regulatory decisions.
Cancer Policy
FDA rolled out a generative artificial intelligence tool designed to help employees across the agency “work more efficiently.”Â
Cancer Policy
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...
Cancer Policy
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.”
Cancer Policy
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.
Regulatory News
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.
PAMN becomes CMCA—the Cancer Marketing & Communications Association—as its size and scope expand
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.
Capitol Hill
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.
Clinical
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.Â
Cancer Policy
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.
How is the enterprise of cancer research doing after the first 100 days of the Trump administration?
Cancer Policy
Over $180 million in NCI grants have been terminated between Feb. 28 and April 8, according to a systematic review published in JAMA May 8.Â
Cancer Policy
In an interview with Science, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said that his time at the NIH has been a “tough period”—especially for him.Â
Cancer Policy
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).
Cancer Policy
Julie Fleshman, president and CEO of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, sent a letter to Congress in response to the proposed NIH budget cuts.Â
Cancer Policy
Scott Gottlieb, Mark McClellan warn of the major challenges created by planned reorganization of FDA
Scott GottliebMark B. McClellanTwo former FDA commissioners—Scott Gottlieb and Mark B. McClellan—warned that the Trump administration’s proposal to restructure FDA by consolidating the different product centers that review drugs, biologics, animal health, tobacco, and medical devices into a single regulatory office would lead to major challenges.
Cancer Policy
FDA announced a meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee May 20 and 21. It will be the first ODAC meeting since President Trump was inaugurated.
Clinical
Three years ago, researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center published stunning results: For the 5% of rectal cancer patients whose tumors are mismatch-repair deficient, neoadjuvant dostarlimab-gxly (Jemperli) has the makings of a silver bullet.
Free
When Kelly Spill was eight months pregnant, she experienced some constipation and noticed blood in her stool. Her OBGYN wasn’t worried.
White House
An updated version of President Trump’s budget request published on May 2 comes as a disappointment for those who hoped that the White House would rethink the draconian cuts contained in an earlier, confidential version of the document that ended up being leaked to the press.Â
Cancer Policy
The Association of American Cancer Institutes sent a letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya expressing concern about the proposed NIH policy change that would centralize all grant reviews to the Center for Scientific Review (The Cancer Letter, March 7, 2025).Â
Cancer Policy
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told NPR that HHS will reduce all contracts by 35%.Â
Cancer Policy
The National Cancer Registrars Association launched an advocacy campaign asking the public to contact their representatives and insist upon the protection of essential public health professionals and adequate funding of cancer prevention and research.
Cancer Policy
On April 21, Women’s Health Initiative investigators were informed that HHS would be terminating the WHI Regional Center contracts at the end of the current fiscal year.
Cancer Policy
The Association for Clinical Oncology has reached out to the new leaders of federal health agencies to ensure continued progress in cancer care, research, and patient access, the organization said.
Cancer Policy
The Department of Government Efficiency has started requiring HHS grantees to provide justifications in order to receive payouts for already awarded grant money.
Cancer Policy
NIH, in a recent notice, prohibits grant recipients from operating programs that promote DEI or “discriminatory equity ideology,” or engage in “discriminatory prohibited boycott.”Â
Cancer Policy
Federal judges in Maryland, New Hampshire and Washington, DC, blocked the Trump administration from following through on threats to cut off funding to universities that engage in DEI efforts.
Cancer Policy
Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation, will resign from the position 16 months before the scheduled end of his six-year term.Â
Regulatory News
As he addressed FDA employees, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described the Trump era as a “generational opportunity to make the regulatory agency live up to its foundational ideals” and emerge from the morass of what he described as the “deep state.”
Clinical
Immunotherapy has changed the course of blood cancers and melanomas, but is stubbornly ineffective for the treatment of most epithelial solid cancers—the cancers that kill about 90% of the more than 600,000 Americans who die of cancer each year.
The day before health economist Jay Bhattacharya stepped into his new role as NIH director, he sent a document to his employees outlining his top five priorities for the department, which included “reproducibility” and “transparency,” two themes he discussed at his confirmation hearings (The Cancer Letter, March 7, 2025).
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Brian J. Druker summits Mt. Hood in 1996The last time Brian J. Druker ran a marathon, his daughter, Julia, was six months old.
In the Archives
Credit: NCI/Linda BartlettIn an oral history conducted by FDA in September 2013, Andrew C. von Eschenbach recounted his eight-month stint in a dual role as both FDA acting commissioner and NCI director.Â
Capitol Hill
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is making sweeping revisions by cutting personnel, centralizing functions, and consolidating divisions.Â
News Analysis
The March 15 continuing resolution has gutted the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program. The program’s funding was cut by 57%, compared to Fiscal Year 2024 levels—from $1.5 billion to $650 million.Â
News Analysis
For over a month since President Trump announced his intent to impose aggressive new tariffs on America’s friends and foes alike, lobbyists for hospitals, medical societies, and makers of branded and generic drugs have been trying to convince him to rethink.
Regulatory News
Government work isn’t what it used to be.
Capitol Hill
Amid the flood zone of today’s Washington, the confirmation hearing for Jayanta (Jay) Bhattacharya’s nomination as director of NIH was remarkably calm.
Regulatory News
In a speech before a joint session of Congress, President Trump briefly addressed pediatric cancer, pointing to a 13-year old brain tumor survivor, Devarjaye “DJ” Daniel, who was watching from the gallery, making his dream come true by naming him a Secret Service agent.
Capitol Hill
The House Republicans have narrowly pushed through a FY25 budget resolution, setting off a tangle of life-and-death sequelae for access to health insurance through Medicaid and Obamacare, and through a second-order effect, biomedical research.Â
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Shearwood McClelland III’s grandfather was a ditchdigger who dreamed that his six Black daughters would become doctors. McClelland’s mother did not disappoint—she became the first Black woman board-certified in maternal fetal medicine in the history of the United States. Now, McClelland is the chief medical officer of Cancer Health Equity at the University of Oklahoma...
In the Archives
In 1984, Peter Greenwald brought a concern about food labeling to FDA. He felt that the “standards of identity”—the standards a food product must meet in order to be marketed under a certain name—went against the best available public health evidence.
White House
As NCI employees and others at HHS were receiving notices of termination, national cancer organizations called on Congress “to restore stability to NIH.”
Free
Nearly 30 years ago, while completing an assignment for his master’s degree in public health, Brian Rivers discovered he had a family history of prostate cancer.Â
White House
Earlier this week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services amid many resignations at federal health agencies and cancellations of NIH and NCAB meetings. All of this happened at a time when the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fire thousands of HHS workers.
White House
The web page for the FDA Office of Minority Health and Health Equity is no more. The pages for the NCI Diversity Training and Biomedical Workforce Development Branch and Disparities Research Branch are kaput as well.
Over the last 45 years, prevention and screening interventions have made a greater contribution to averting cancer deaths than have improvements in treatment, according to a modeling study led by researchers at NCI.Â
By Yiqing Wang and Jacquelyn Cobb
Clinical
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network published its first patient resource aimed at informing people about the latest recommendations around hereditary and familial cancer risk. The document provides guidance on testing for inherited genetic mutations that can raise the risk of cancer.
The NCI Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN) has published a cluster of papers intended to advance the framework of spatial omics, the science of profiling morphological and molecular features of human cancers in two and three dimensions.
The NCI Board of Scientific Advisors approved four new concepts and five reissue concepts at a joint meeting of the BSA and the National Cancer Advisory Board Dec. 2-3.
NCI
NCI is temporarily reducing its paylines as the federal government is being funded at FY2024 levels via a continuing resolution that extends until Dec. 20, delaying the budgeting process for most federal agencies in the new fiscal year.
One year after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services made the decision to pay for patient navigation services, data from early adopters show that navigation services are leading to better outcomes, significant cost savings for healthcare systems, and mitigation of health inequities.
Clinical
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium will focus on doing the same with less—less surgery, less radiation, while maintaining clinical outcomes. The symposium will take place Dec. 10-13 in San Antonio, TX.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
When Judith O. Hopkins started medical school in 1974, she had to sign a contract promising to not get pregnant. This was not the most egregious form of sexism she would face in her career. Seeking a residency in emergency medicine in 1977, she was told point blank that she would not be considered. “I...
The National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 90 regular members and 10 international members during its annual meeting.Â
Clinical
In an industry that set its sights on reshaping cancer detection, GRAIL Inc. had the appearance of a pioneer.
Clinical
If clinical research were anything like fly fishing, the scientific question that EA3163 trial attempted to answer might be considered “the one that got away”.
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee on Sept. 26 voted that PD-L1 inhibitors should not be indicated as a first-line treatment for patients with PD-L1-negative gastric/gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
