Undeterred by NIH’s failure to address a set of questions submitted seven months ago, a House oversight committee is persisting with its investigation into handling of sexual harassment complaints at institutions that receive federal funding.

President Joe Biden is requesting a $920 million increase to the NIH budget in fiscal year 2024, a 1.93% boost. Of that amount, $503 million, or nearly 55%, is slated for NCI, keeping funding for the majority of other NIH institutes and centers at FY23 levels.

Academic cancer centers are facing severe staffing shortages after three years of personnel attrition during the COVID-19 pandemic—resulting in depressed levels of patient accrual to investigator-initiated and grant-funded clinical trials.

NCI is increasing the R01 payline to the 12th percentile in fiscal year 2023, up from the 11th percentile in FY22—bringing the institute’s payline to a level not seen since 2010.

President Joe Biden mentioned cancer 13 times in his impassioned State of the Union address and placed cancer research at the top of his Unity Agenda—an indication that his administration would continue to prioritize funding for cancer research in fiscal year 2024.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd said “I can’t breathe” more than 20 times before he suffocated on a street in Minneapolis. On Jan. 7, 2023, Tyre Nichols repeatedly screamed, “Mom, mom, mom” as he was beaten to death on a street in Memphis.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America will “fully transition” to City of Hope’s brand, giving the southern California-based cancer care health system a national footprint.

For a decade, thousands of PhDs in epigenetics may have been relying on the wrong tool as they study the biological processes that regulate how and when genes are expressed or silenced.

It took a team of researchers more than 18 months to get their paper on epigenetic variation published—likely because they are saying that epigeneticists have been fishing in the wrong pond for a decade.

Medicare Advantage, the private insurance alternative to traditional Medicare, is popular for several reasons: lower premiums, dental and vision coverage, and a cap on out-of-pocket costs.

Ruben A. Mesa is going into the new year with a massive new challenge: bring together the programs and cultures of an academic cancer center and a hybrid cancer center—and convincing NCI that the new organization should keep its elite designation.

NIH and NCI received a $2.5 billion and $408 million increase, respectively, in the fiscal year 2023 omnibus appropriations package that President Joe Biden signed into law Dec. 23. 

A personalized mRNA cancer vaccine sponsored by Moderna and Merck has the potential to change the standard of care for melanoma patients—and reshape the landscape of cancer vaccines—if the company’s latest data on the vaccine are validated in a phase III clinical trial.

Monica Bertagnolli, the 16th director of the National Cancer Institute, announced that she will be undergoing treatment for early-stage breast cancer.

The past six weeks have brought fundamental change in the way oncology drugs are being developed. At this unprecedented moment in oncopolitics, FDA, NCI, academic oncologists, advocates, and the industry are in agreement on how cancer therapies should be developed, tested and approved.

Within two months of stepping in as director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, Renee Wegrzyn has grown her staff fivefold, built a website, juggled 30 congressional meetings, and met with 10 patient advocacy organizations.

Pragmatica-Lung is shaping up as the clinical trial to watch—not just because of the research question, but because of the way it’s being addressed.

The Pragmatica-Lung trial required many people to start to think differently about conducting phase III clinical trials—and it took a lot of advocacy to make the trial launch quickly, said Ellen Sigal, founder and chair of Friends of Cancer Research.

Patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer who are matched to targeted therapy live longer when liquid biopsies are used to detect genomic alterations in circulating tumor DNA that aren’t picked up by tissue sequencing, according to a study published Nov. 10 in Nature Medicine.

The American Cancer Society has formed two roundtables—focused on breast and cervical malignancies—to eliminate disparities and improve policies and care systems.

The White House and the American Cancer Society will convene leaders in academic oncology and across public and private arenas to address challenges in breast and cervical cancers on Oct. 24 in Washington, D.C.

“Yesterday, I went to sleep as acting NCI director, and this morning, as I woke up, I have a new boss, Monica Bertagnolli,” Douglas R. Lowy said in the morning of Oct. 3, addressing a well-caffeinated meeting of the Association of American Cancer Institutes.

Oct. 3 was Monica M. Bertagnolli’s first day on the job as the 16th director of the National Cancer Institute.

Up to 15% of U.S. counties—home to about 25 million Americans—fall outside the reach of the catchment area of this country’s cancer centers.

Drawing on Charles Dickens, NCI Acting Director Douglas Lowy has a teaching moment for oncology: we live in the best of times as well as the worst of times, because only fragments of human society—both in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries—fully benefit from modern cancer care.

When you are making a point that the country that put humans on the moon also has the capacity to cure cancers, venue and timing matter. On Sept. 12, President Joe Biden chose John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum—and the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s 1962 moonshot speech—to announce his plan’s latest iteration.

A House committee is requesting that NIH provide answers to 30 questions about the “pervasive culture of sexual harassment” in biomedical research.

As NCI prepares for a transition of leadership, Acting Director Douglas Lowy is setting out an agenda focused on multi-cancer detection tests, undruggable targets, cell therapy, and on eliminating disparities caused by persistent poverty.

President Joe Biden has announced his intent to appoint Monica Bertagnolli as the 16th director of the National Cancer Institute—and the first woman and first chair of a clinical trials cooperative group to be named to the role.

As real-world evidence becomes ever more essential, a cancer health technology company that played a key role in modernizing 21st-century health data is capitalizing on its accomplishments in the U.S.—and moving into international markets to meet the growing demand for actionable data.

Don’t sack the director because your cancer center’s score and ranking by U.S. News & World Report have slipped. 

Two years ago, as next-generation sequencing and checkpoint inhibitors became the standard of care in many cancers, Joan Massagué started hearing questions from philanthropists about the “next big thing” in cancer research.

Monica M. Bertagnolli, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, stands poised to become the first woman and the first chair of a clinical trials cooperative group to be named director of the National Cancer Institute.

NIH is now required by law to direct grantee institutions to report senior personnel who are disciplined for misconduct, sexual or otherwise.

Effective July 9, NIH-funded institutions that do not report relevant cases of misconduct—including sexual harassment, bullying, and retaliation—within one month would be considered to be in violation of NIH regulations and of federal law.

Now that the constitutional right to abortion has been eliminated, U.S. healthcare providers have to choose one of three options: give up abortion services, relocate, or wrangle with enforcement and unfriendly state legislatures.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that real-world data is an indispensable tool healthcare professionals should use to rapidly respond to emerging gaps in care delivery.

FDA is asking sponsors of all investigational medical products to focus on including diverse patients throughout the clinical development process.

Ukrainian refugees and displaced persons with cancer are fighting a double war for survival—which is why aid networks and providers must prioritize psychosocial oncology, said Csaba Dégi, executive secretary of the International Psycho-Oncology Society.

On March 7, or 11 days into Russia invasion, Mike Morrissey, chief executive of the European Cancer Organisation, approached the society’s board to inquire as to whether they should convene a special network for Ukraine.

After nearly five years in the federal government—at both NCI and FDA—Ned Sharpless is stepping down from his position as NCI director.

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.

James Allison has reshaped cancer drug development, making checkpoint inhibitors a staple of therapy in many key indications—and dramatically improving survival outcomes in previously recalcitrant diseases.

After ferrying her son to safety across the Hungarian border, Nataliia Verovkina has returned to Kyiv to resume treating cancer patients.

All scheduled cancer care across Ukraine has been stopped as more than 60 hospitals have been badly damaged in the course of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian oncologists say.

Nataliia Verovkina, a medical oncologist and research fellow at the National Cancer Institute of Ukraine, is now in the town of Vinnytsia, having travelled there from Kyiv to get her son away from the war zone.

On March 2, a bus filled with Ukrainian children was getting ready to leave Odesa for the border of Moldova, Ukraine’s closest neighbor.

Ukrainian communities across the United States are sending essential medical and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine via organizations, including the Ukrainian Medical Association of North America, said Solomiya Grushchak, a member of UMANA.

Changes at Mission Control notwithstanding, the new Cancer Moonshot is ready for liftoff, says Danielle Carnival, coordinator of the White House cancer initiative.

President Joe Biden’s new national goal for the reignited Cancer Moonshot—to cut today’s age-adjusted cancer mortality rates by at least 50% before 2050—is bold, but achievable, said NCI Director Ned Sharpless.

On Feb. 1, as President Joe Biden was preparing to fire up the Cancer Moonshot, Eric Lander was the scientist in charge of mission control.

The White House has announced an expansion of the Cancer Moonshot’s mission beyond its initial focus on accelerating research and data sharing in oncology—with promises of renewed funding for an array of ambitious presidential initiatives.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is taking on a major global health challenge—the murky quagmire of drug shortages—by partnering with the World Health Organization to prove that practical solutions are within reach.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s new $200-million Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines—a partnership with the World Health Organization­­—can be traced back to a critique from a visiting reviewer.

Many global health professionals have dreamed about solving drug shortages, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is taking the first steps toward eliminating the problem, said Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, director of St. Jude Global.

Fifty physicians and scientists who review grant proposals at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas have signed a strongly-worded statement in protest of recent Texas policies and laws that “severely undermine” public health.

As omicron infections and hospitalizations continue to peak in the U.S., a high-stakes battle over the national public health response is being fought in the rafters of political Washington.

If 2020 was a year of reckoning, 2021 was a year of action—and major milestones for The Cancer Letter and the cancer community.

NCI is temporarily reducing its paylines as the federal government is being funded at FY2021 levels via another continuing resolution, delaying the budgeting process for most federal agencies in the new fiscal year.

Every cancer center seeking to obtain (or keep) an NCI designation will soon have to present a plan for increasing the diversity of their faculty and workforce.

Christopher Li and Wendy Law, both of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, have a message for leaders of DEI programs in oncology.

FDA watchers and clinical trialists in oncology may want to pay close attention to the agency’s latest plans to increase representation of traditionally marginalized populations in drug development.

There’s a cultural perception in drug development that enrolling a diverse, heterogeneous patient cohort can be “risky” for detecting drug effects—a perception that needs to go away, said Lola Fashoyin-Aje, associate director of the Science & Policy Program to Address Disparities at the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence and a deputy division director in the agency’s Office of Oncologic Diseases.

Drug manufacturers and researchers have a moral obligation to design clinical trials that adequately represent the target population for the investigational agent—and these medical products need to be safe and effective for everyone, leading clinical trial experts in oncology say.

The Association of American Cancer Institutes is designing two programs to address systemic underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority physicians and scientists in leadership positions in oncology.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas will focus on finding solutions for health disparities among patients with cancer, Michelle Le Beau, the institute’s new chief scientific officer, said to The Cancer Letter.

Francis Collins will step down as director of NIH by the end of 2021, closing out a chapter in his career as the longest-serving presidentially appointed NIH director.

American cancer patients have collectively gained up to 14 million years of life since 1980 as a result of NCI-funded cancer trials conducted by the National Clinical Trials Network, a study led by SWOG Cancer Research Network found.

Women who report sexual misconduct to NIH may find that their complaints have a limited shelf life—these complaints may become null, or at least ineligible for “even a cursory review” once perpetrators cut ties with NIH.

NIH may be “constrained” in investigating sexual misconduct at NIH-funded institutions once alleged perpetrators are no longer affiliated with these institutions, NIH officials implied in their response to a congressional inquiry on sexual misconduct (The Cancer Letter, Sept. 24, 2021).

Routine screening procedures for breast, colon, and cervical cancers in the first half of 2021 have failed to recover, falling by about a third below historical baselines, even as Americans are resuming normal activities.

NCI is asking for an appropriation of $7.8 billion for fiscal year 2023—about $800 million above the House’s FY22 proposed budget for NCI.

A Texas law that bans all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy—and a Supreme Court order that allows the state law to take effect—is having an impact on cancer research in the state.

A Congressional letter is asking NIH to describe the procedures employed for rooting out sexual misconduct committed by advisors.

Two years have gone by since we put together our first summer reading issue in 2019—and by the gods, what a ride these two years have been!

The vast majority of hospitals in the United States—up to 80%—treat patient populations that are disproportionately white, U.S. News & World Report said, unveiling a new  suite of health equity measures earlier this week.

When Ben Harder and his team of health analysts at U.S. News & World Report developed a suite of health equity measures for America’s  hospitals, they expected to find some level of disparity, but nothing prepared them for the shocking magnitude of inequity they uncovered.

To comprehend the significance of disparities articulated in the U.S. News study and define the scorecards’ impact on bragging rights at cancer centers, The Cancer Letter asked four leaders in oncology to evaluate the health equity measures.

Institutions receiving NIH funds through grants or cooperative agreements would be required—by federal law—to notify the NIH director when a principal investigator or other key personnel are removed or disciplined for “harassment, bullying, retaliation, or hostile working conditions.”

As a comprehensive cancer center in Los Angeles, City of Hope serves one of the most diverse—and vulnerable—patient populations in the U.S.

When Peter Pisters returned to The University of Texas System as president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in December 2017, one of his top priorities included achieving gender parity and diversifying the hospital’s executive suite.

Two academic health systems in Cleveland are creating programs and faculty positions to direct institutional initiatives on health equity—at the executive level.

A recent analysis of the National Cancer Institute’s workforce and grant recipients shows that Black and Hispanic scientists are dramatically underrepresented across key metrics, both intramural and extramural.

Racial and ethnic minorities that are underrepresented in medicine have even lower representation in leadership of NCI-designated cancer centers, a study by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers found.

This is the first installment of conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion in recruitment and mentorship at academic cancer centers.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, the centerpiece of the Biden Administration’s war on disease, is designed to be something much more than an ordinary federal bureaucracy.

Miruna Sasu spent more than 20 years as a digital health and innovation expert at life sciences companies—then came a realization

President Joe Biden is requesting $52 billion in FY2022 for NIH—$9 billion above the enacted FY21 level—of which $6.5 billion is slated for the proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

In an expression of support for increasing funding for cancer research and prevention, the Bidens earlier this week endorsed the National Cancer Research Month.

As American life returns to a semblance of normalcy, it may be time for President Biden’s administration to prioritize building a national digital health infrastructure.

Small dreams have no power to move hearts, and in a new six-year strategic plan, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is thinking very big. What would it take to drastically increase cure rates for childhood cancer worldwide?

Clinical trials for oncology drugs are running into unique challenges as protocols become more complex and as the number of new investigational agents continues to outpace all other drugs, according to a recent study by Tufts University researchers.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress April 28, President Joe Biden made a pitch for significantly increasing federal funding for biomedical research, especially cancer research—a cornerstone of his jobs plan.

The boundary between basic science and engineering has been the subject of animated discussions in cancer research for quite some time. Where does science end and engineering begin? Is that boundary porous? How does it shift over time?

President Joe Biden’s proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health would be a welcome partner to NCI—particularly in conducting large, collaborative clinical investigations, NCI Director Ned Sharpless said.“I think having ARPA-H as part of the NIH is good for the NCI,” Sharpless said April 11 in his remarks at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. “How this would fit with the ongoing efforts in cancer at the NCI is still something to work out.”

President Joe Biden April 9 announced his FY2022 budgetary plans for ARPA-H—Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health—a federal entity designed to “deliver breakthroughs to find cures for cancer and other diseases.”

We are shocked and horrified by the recent spate of violence and hate crimes against people of Asian and Pacific Islander  descent across the United States.In response to these events, The Cancer Letter is stepping up coverage of inequities and disparities—and we are seeking your help and guidance on an upcoming series of investigative stories.As a publication that actively advocates for racial justice and health equity, we condemn these attacks, which have led to deaths, severe injuries, and widespread fear in AAPI communities.

In his upcoming budget proposal, President Joe Biden is expected to announce plans for a new, DARPA-like federal entity with a mission of accelerating cures for cancer and other diseases.