Paul Goldberg is the editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter. He joined the publication in 1986.
His coverage has had a profound impact on the field of oncology, leading to numerous Congressional investigations, and helped change policy, regulation, and standards of care.
Paul’s reporting has been recognized by the Washington DC Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Gerald Loeb Awards, the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Foundation.
His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Washington Monthly, and he has been featured on 60 Minutes, 20/20, CNN and NPR. He is also a novelist and author of nonfiction books.
His author website is www.paulgoldberg.com.
Paul graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in economics in 1981.
His coverage has had a profound impact on the field of oncology, leading to numerous Congressional investigations, and helped change policy, regulation, and standards of care.
Paul’s reporting has been recognized by the Washington DC Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Gerald Loeb Awards, the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Foundation.
His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Washington Monthly, and he has been featured on 60 Minutes, 20/20, CNN and NPR. He is also a novelist and author of nonfiction books.
His author website is www.paulgoldberg.com.
Paul graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in economics in 1981.
Books
The Château
(Picador, Macmillan Publishers, 2018)
The Yid
(Picador, Macmillan Publishers, 2016)
How We Do Harm: A Doctor Break Ranks About Being Sick in America
with Otis W. Brawley, (St. Martin’s Press, 2012)
The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era
(Little, Brown, 1990; and in paperback, University of Pittsburgh Press) with Ludmilla Alexeyeva
To Live Like Everyone
translation of a memoir of Anatoly Marchenko (Henry Holt, 1989)
The Final Act
(William Morrow, 1988)
Latest Stories
Podcast
Candace S. Johnson leads America’s oldest cancer research center and Jonathan W. Friedberg leads the newest NCI-designated center. Their catchment areas are contiguous, their faculty and staff members collaborate often, and together their institutions embody the culture of NCI-designated cancer centers.
Cancer Policy
George Sigounas, an expert in bone marrow transplantation, was named to the newly created post of chief science advisor at NCI.
Cancer Policy
Congressional Justifications displaying the details of the President Trump’s budget request for the fiscal year 2026 show that the success rates for Research Project Grants at NCI would plummet from 13.4% in FY2024 to 8.3% during the next fiscal year.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
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.
How is the enterprise of cancer research doing after the first 100 days of the Trump administration?
News Analysis
After nearly three decades of reviewing NCI-funded extramural projects and sometimes saving NCI from its own folly, the Board of Scientific Advisors has been terminated as part of the Trump administration’s drive to reduce the size of the federal government.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Steven Libutti tells us about building a $900 million cancer hospital for Rutgers RWJBarnabas Health
Over the past seven years, as Steven K. Libutti was designing the 12-story, $900-plus million cancer hospital in New Brunswick, NJ, he often thought of the functionality of the building that inspired it: Building 10, the NIH Clinical Center.
Cancer Policy
Over the past week, as cancer control experts scoured through a confidential budget document called the “passback” budget, they haven’t been able to find any trace of a relatively small but highly impactful program that funds state cancer registries.
The Directors
Speaking on The Cancer Letter Podcast, Taofeek Kunle Owonikoko recalled recent conversations with two junior faculty members at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Confidential Trump administration budget documents show that the upcoming FY26 Budget Request will radically cut about $50 billion out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reshuffling agency components, and slashing the number of NIH institutes and centers to just eight.
Credit: OHSU/Christine Torres HicksAfter a year as director of the Oregon Health and Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute, Tom Sellers has stepped down from his position. He is replaced by Lisa Coussens, chair of the Department of Cell, Developmental & Cancer Biology, who was appointed interim center director.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
After Karen Knudsen departed from the American Cancer Society late last year, the question of where she will end up becoming the fodder for cocktail party chatter throughout oncology.
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
The University of Rochester Wilmot Cancer Institute last week was named the 73rd NCI-designated cancer center. Now, New York State has eight NCI-designated cancer centers. Only California has more—ten.
White House
Columbia’s Herbert Irving Cancer Center is 52 streets, 2.6 miles, and five subway stops away from the university’s main campus and the pro-Palestinian protests that have been taking place there.
The Directors
How are cancer centers in two rural states—Kansas and South Carolina—weathering the challenges of Trump-era belt-tightening and uncertainty? Their directors weigh in on The Cancer Letter Podcast.
Regulatory News
Government work isn’t what it used to be.
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.
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.”
News Analysis
Cancer data quoted in President Trump’s executive order last week have raised eyebrows among experts in cancer epidemiology.
The Directors
Is the Community Outreach and Engagement mandate the next item on the chopping block as the Trump administration makes its mark on science policy? What about health disparities research?
White House
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Feb. 10, issued a preliminary restraining order, blocking the Trump administration from enforcing an NIH guidance that would cut the indirect costs paid on NIH grants to a flat rate of 15%.
White House
The Trump administration did exactly what it said it would do to disorient anyone involved in making policy or touched by it. The president and his crew have “flooded the zone”—the term and the image are theirs, as is the strategy of dropping a flurry of executive orders and memoranda that shake the foundations of the American system of government, raising questions of legality and constitutionality, and, above all, making it a challenge for anyone to see the entire picture and think strategically.
White House
Rooting out the “illegal and immoral discrimination” of DEI is the first order of business for Trump
Surprised was the last thing anyone should claim to be as the Trump administration, on its first day, smashed the federal government’s diversity equity and inclusion offices, literally sending employees who administer these programs packing and making plans for their prompt firing.
White House
W. Kimryn Rathmell has stepped down as NCI director, opting to hand her resignation to the Biden administration over facing the uncertainties that Trump and his team are expected to usher in starting next week.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
In 1999, Richard Pazdur, a GI oncologist at MD Anderson, saw an FDA recruitment ad in The New England Journal of Medicine. The agency was looking for a director of the FDA Division of Oncology Drug Products.
On Jan. 7, a bit after 6 p.m., Ravi Salgia was at his Eaton Canyon home, at the edge of Angeles National Forest.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
On Dec. 3, the faculty and staff members at the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute received an email from Brian J. Druker, the institution’s star scientist, former director, and current CEO, informing them that he would be stepping down from his executive role.
Capitol Hill
The Biden administration has left NIH in a weakened state, intensifying politicization of science on Capitol Hill and eroding the bipartisan support the government’s premier biomedical research agency has traditionally enjoyed.
White House
President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the post of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, placing the vaccine skeptic in charge of a vast empire of research, engineering, regulatory, and health care agencies.
Editorial
On Nov. 5, as the American people expressed their will, electing Donald Trump to a second term, I started to wonder what my friends in oncology were thinking.
As the Trump administration stands poised to redraft the nation’s public health priorities, the American Cancer Society, one of the most prominent advocates for cancer patients, finds itself in an interregnum, following an abrupt departure of its Chief Executive Officer Karen E. Knudsen.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
A curious piece of paper hangs in a frame outside the director’s office at University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center on the second floor of the General Hospital.
Wayne A. I. Frederick, a surgical oncologist and former president of Howard University, will step in as interim chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, effective Nov. 2.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
On Nov. 24, 2003, an article in The Boston Globe told the story of a patient’s remarkable response to gefitinib, a drug that had recently been approved by FDA.
By Paul Goldberg and McKenzie Prillaman
Regulatory News
A group of melanoma experts, joined by three advocacy groups focused on melanoma, has engaged FDA in a public discussion of the challenges of developing new drugs in the refractory setting and the role crossover can play in such trials.
Free
City of Hope has received a $150 million gift from entrepreneurs and philanthropists A. Emmet Stephenson Jr. and his daughter Tessa Stephenson Brand to create a program focused on pancreatic cancer research.
The American Cancer Society said that Karen E. Knudsen “announced her desire to transition” from her role as CEO of the 111-year-old charity in order to pursue “the next phase of her strategy to accelerate progress against cancer.”
Obituary
Richard A. Rettig, the author of an authoritative history of the writing of the National Cancer Act of 1971, died on Aug. 7.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
In 1996, Lei Zheng, a graduate of Peking Union Medical College, enrolled in the doctorate program at what was then known as the Cancer Therapy & Research Center in San Antonio.
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee July 25 voted unanimously to set more rigorous standards for new trials for approval of perioperative indications of cancer drugs.
Free
When air sirens sound over Kyiv, Ukraine, patients undergoing bone marrow transplants at Ohmatdyt National Children’s Hospital don’t have the option of going to the bomb shelter.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Robert L. Ferris, a head-and-neck surgeon and an expert in cancer immunotherapy was named the executive director of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the chief of oncology services at UNC Health.
Free
On Sept. 24, 2002, when I showed up at a meeting of the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, I had a pretty good idea that the drug on the agenda—AstraZeneca’s Iressa (gefitinib)—was having a surprising effect on some patients in third-line non-small cell lung cancer.
Free
The American Cancer Society and the American Society of Clinical Oncology have combined their cancer information resources, which will be available at no cost to the public on cancer.org. The collaboration, which combines the two organizations’ sites—ACS’s cancer.org and ASCO’s cancer.net—was announced at the 2024 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago May 1. Cancer.org is now...
Obituary
Richard M. Simon, NCI biostatistician who likely set a record for the number of first-authored papers, and whose interests included country music, horseback riding and ballroom dancing, died May 9, at age 80. Simon joined NCI in 1974.
Capitol Hill
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) has asked Amgen to provide copies of the company’s communications with FDA related to the dosage of Lumakras (sotorasib), a KRAS inhibitor marketed under an accelerated approval for non-small cell lung cancer.
Free
Over the past three years, the American Cancer Society has recovered from the fundraising decline brought on by COVID-19 and has reversed the years-long fundraising slump in public support.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health can add the word “Comprehensive” to its name, becoming the 57th institution to earn this top-level designation from NCI.
As we were finishing last week’s issue of The Cancer Letter, I had a lingering fear that my story about cancer centers bifurcating the job of the cancer center director would miss an institution or two.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
A previous version of this story stated incorrectly that seven institutions split the role of director in two. The original list omitted Fox Chase Cancer Center. Read more.Slowly, over the past two decades, at least eight major cancer centers have changed their organizational structures, splitting the job of the cancer center director into two boxes on the org chart: (1) the chief executive, and (2) the scientist in charge of the NCI Cancer Center Support Grant.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Next week, NCI will announce its plans for surviving on an austere budget given to it by Congress as fiscal year 2024 approaches the six-month mark.
Regulatory News
FDA issued Complete Response Letters for the Biologics License Application for odronextamab in relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma and in R/R diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, each after two or more lines of systemic therapy.
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of expanding the indications of two chimeric antigen receptor engineered T-cell therapies for multiple myeloma that showed improvement in progression-free survival, but also reported a higher number of early deaths on the experimental arm.
Free
Soon after he was diagnosed with a dedifferentiated liposarcoma, C. Norman Coleman reached out to The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project to initiate a series of interviews about his life and career.
By Otis W. Brawley, Alexandria Carolan and Paul Goldberg
Regulatory News
When conducting a randomized clinical trial of a treatment regimen based on an immune checkpoint inhibitor, trial sponsors should include overall survival as an endpoint, FDA officials say.
By Matthew Bin Han Ong and Paul Goldberg
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 12:2 to recommend approval of the drug imetelstat for a myelodysplastic syndrome indication.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Sometimes in oncology, you get “beat-the-reaper” stories.
Obituary
In September, Norm Coleman received great news: he qualified for the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in New Zealand.
Free
As a new deputy director at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, Monica Baskin has assumed a level of responsibility that is unusual, if not unprecedented, for a population scientist at an NCI-designated cancer center.
By Robert A. Winn, Paul Goldberg and Alexandria Carolan
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
A month after reporting to work in the top job at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, Taofeek K. Owonikoko reflected on the obligations that come with being a Black director of an NCI-designated cancer center.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
As artificial intelligence becomes an indispensable tool in cancer research, drug sponsors and researchers should focus on building and utilizing rich real-world evidence databases that can be used to complement clinical trials.
By Paul Goldberg and Matthew Bin Han Ong
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
When Naoto T. Ueno left MD Anderson to become director of the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center, he took one of the most challenging jobs in oncology.
Free
Medicare has started to pay for navigation for guiding patients through the maze of health care services in settings where treatment involves multiple specialties.
Free
ConcertAI, a company focused on real-world evidence and generative AI, has acquired CancerLinQ, a real-world data and quality of care technology service that was launched by the American Society of Clinical Oncology a decade ago.
Free
The decision by the American Society of Clinical Oncology to venture into the business of Big Data was inspired by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a law focused on “putting America back to work,” Clifford A. Hudis, ASCO’s CEO said to The Cancer Letter.
At a time when distinguished careers can falter because of a careless Facebook post, the oncologist-iconoclast Vinay Prasad is showing no sign of moderating the shaming and haranguing that make him a social media phenom.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Vinay Prasad, a social media phenom and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, recently stunned his colleagues by stating that doctors at Vanderbilt University acted in a “despicable” manner when they offered a double lung transplant to a lung cancer patient. “The doctors at Vanderbilt are despicable in my...
White House
President Joe Biden on Nov. 17 announced his intent to appoint W. Kimryn Rathmell as NCI director.
Clinical
Experts in pharmacology and lung cancer urged physicians to prescribe the Amgen agent Lumakras (sotorasib) at the lowest tested dose—240 mg—instead of the four times higher dose of 960 mg recommended by the sponsor.
Free
John Carpten, when he was named director of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in April, took over a massive, newly formed national oncology network—the first of its kind.
Benjamin G. Neel, a widely respected cancer biologist with a considerable social media presence, was suspended from his job as director of the New York University Perlmutter Cancer Center following complaints over his retweets of political cartoons and other materials that were critical of protesters against Israel’s strikes on Gaza and that included caricatures critics described as “anti-Arab.”
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center received NCI’s Comprehensive designation just 10 whip-fast years after the center received its initial Cancer Center designation.
NCI Director's Report
Amid the gridlock that has seized Washington, NCI faces a grim and disturbing FY2024, the institute’s Principal Deputy Director Douglas R. Lowy said at the annual meeting of the Association of American Cancer Institutes.
By Alexandria Carolan and Paul Goldberg
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee concurred with the FDA staff that the Amgen Inc. confirmatory trial of the lung cancer therapy sotorasib (Lumakras) was uninterpretable as a result of a perceived loss of equipoise.
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee Oct. 4 voted decisively to recommend the first-ever approval supported by a clinical trial that relied on an external control arm—using patient-level data extracted from another trial.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The American Association for Cancer Research has established the AACR Cancer Centers Alliance to foster collaboration between cancer centers.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Montefiore Einstein Cancer Center can now add the word “Comprehensive” to its logo.
Free
Shelton “Shelley” Earp said he will step down as director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center effective June 2024.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Crystal S. Denlinger was named CEO of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
Free
When John Laszlo joined the Acute Leukemia Service at NCI in 1956, the field of oncology was nascent—and the cure for childhood leukemia seemed beyond reach.
By Alexandria Carolan and Paul Goldberg
Free
Fifteen years ago, after the death of his favorite uncle, Steven Rosen committed his grief to paper.
Capitol Hill
The fiscal year 2024 Labor, HHS, Education, and Related Agencies spending bill heading for approval by the House Appropriations Committee cuts NIH by $2.8 billion and NCI by $216 million.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
On June 29, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling that reverses 45 years of legal precedent in admissions at institutions of higher learning, striking a death blow to affirmative action.
By Paul Goldberg and Matthew Bin Han Ong
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The Sunderland Foundation has given The University of Kansas Cancer Center a $100 million gift to construct a cancer center building.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The University of Florida Health Cancer Center has received NCI Cancer Center designation.
Clinical
A survey conducted by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that 93% of its 27 member institutions are experiencing shortages of carboplatin, and 70% lack cisplatin.
Editorial
The facts of my story about UCSD Moores Cancer Center in last week’s issue of The Cancer Letter (June 2, 2023) don’t seem to be in dispute.
The Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health is in imminent danger of losing its Comprehensive designation, and members of the center’s External Advisory Board are urging the leadership of the parent institution to act fast.
Free
VCU Massey Cancer Center can now add the word “Comprehensive” to its name.
Free
Today’s critical shortage of cisplatin and carboplatin occurred because manufacturers failed to invest in enhancing production capacity, Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence and acting director of the Office of Oncologic Diseases, said to The Cancer Letter.
Clinical
Proven curative regimens containing platinum-based drugs—cisplatin and carboplatin—have become largely unavailable because of a nationwide drug shortage. The institutions that have some supplies of cisplatin and carboplatin are setting up algorithms for rationing their dwindling stocks, which usually means giving top priority to patients treated with curative intent and denying standard-of-care treatment to patients who cannot be cured but who can still benefit from these drugs.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The shortage of platinum-based drugs in the United States is an endemic problem—i.e., Europe is unaffected—caused by the absence of transparency, dearth of early warnings, and a lack of redundancy in the supply chain.
White House
President Biden announced his intent to nominate Monica Bertagnolli to the post of NIH director.
Regulatory News
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee agreed with the agency’s forcefully stated view that Lynparza (olaparib), a PARP inhibitor, should be given only to metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer patients whose tumors have a BRCA mutation.
Cancer prevention and control and efforts to ensure health equity are essential in meeting the Cancer Moonshot goal of halving cancer mortality in the next 25 years, but some complex scientific and societal problems must be resolved for this to happen, a group of four directors of NCI-designated cancer centers said.
White House
If you saw Monica Bertagnolli dash around at the Orlando convention center at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research earlier this week, you would not have guessed that these may be her final days in the NCI director’s job.
Free
This point is easily overlooked: Monica Bertagnolli has two jobs, not one. She is the director of the National Cancer Institute and head of the National Cancer Program.
By Paul Goldberg and Matthew Bin Han Ong
