Paul Goldberg

Change swept through executive offices at cancer centers in recent weeks, shifting top leadership at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Duke Cancer Institute, and the University of Florida.

Russian general who was accused by Ukraine’s security services of carrying out a bombing of a pediatric cancer hospital in Kyiv two years ago was shot by an unknown assassin deep inside Russia, becoming the latest in a series of Russia’s commanders to be killed or wounded in retribution for war crimes. 

Physician-scientists by day, a funk-loving musical troupe by night. You may have seen The CheckPoints—a 13 member cover band with a three-piece brass section and Jim Allison on harmonica—movin’, groovin’, and gettin’ down as a mainstay closing act at ASCO, AACR, or the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer annual meetings.

New pressures notwithstanding, being a cancer center director is still a dream job, two of the nation’s newest cancer center directors said.

FDA has granted an accelerated approval to RP1 (vusolimogene oderparepvec) following the agency’s Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee’s 10:3 vote in support of the biologic in combination with nivolumab for the treatment of advanced melanoma in patients who have progressed on prior anti-PD-1 therapy.

The United States has a translation problem. Scientific breakthroughs in oncology are accelerating, but clinical trial infrastructure hasn’t kept pace. 

The Trump administration has a fight on its hands as it pushes forward with a plan to exert greater political control over government funding of science. 

Maura L. Gillison, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist and molecular epidemiologist whose work changed the standard of care for head and neck cancer by distinguishing human papillomavirus-positive from HPV-negative disease and thereby guiding diagnosis, treatment and prevention, died on June 21.

How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.

HHS earlier this week rolled out a cluster of initiatives related to simplifying clinical trials, presenting these measures as a government-wide effort to maintain America’s leadership in early-stage drug development.

On June 9, the House Appropriations Committee passed its version of the fiscal year 2027 spending bill for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

Last week, Wafik El-Deiry, a cancer researcher at Brown University, showed up at a Senate hearing to talk about what he sees as dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine. 

The White House Office of Management and Budget has released a 412-page proposal that inserts political appointees into all stages of reviewing and awarding of federal research grants.

If you believe in the miraculous healing power of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and the harm from vaccination for HPV and COVID-19, you’ve got a powerful friend in Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Getting NCI clinical trials to the community has never been an easy task. Has it been getting simpler or more difficult in recent years? 

Top HHS officials last week called for a “moonshot” focused on the role of the microbiome in cancer.

As stirrings rise of a cancer “moonshot” focused on the relationship between the human microbiome and cancer, City of Hope’s Marcel van den Brink says this is the perfect time for such an influx of support.

A version of the curriculum vitae of Vinay Prasad, an oncologist who recently departed amid controversy from a high position at FDA, contains a surprising claim. 

In recent months, several directors of cancer centers, appearing on The Directors, a segment of The Cancer Letter Podcast, mentioned that their institutions are increasingly providing small grants—typically in the range of $50,000—to scientists to enable them to keep their labs open.

At a lecture at Yale Cancer Center recently, Robert A. Winn brandished a copy of a 32-year old booklet titled “Cancer at a Crossroads: A Report to Congress for the Nation,” using it as a show-and-tell prop in arguing that America’s cancer program is once again at a crossroads and therefore in urgent need of strategic thinking (The Cancer Letter, April 10, 2026).

Over the course of his first six months as NCI director, Anthony Letai has contended with federal budget turbulence, a record-setting government shutdown, and concerns about the flow of over research dollars. 

We have good news: The Cancer Letter Podcast is a nominee for The Webby Awards, which are recognized as the internet’s highest honor. 

Budgets can surprise you, and the White House budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 is more surprising than most.

Leadership is changing at The Wistar Institute and the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute in the months to come—but the leaders of the two institutions say that this will have little if any effect on the clinical-research collaboration that they have spent the past 15years building (The Cancer Letter, July 12, 2019). 

Roy S. Herbst was named director of Dartmouth Cancer Center. 

The National Cancer Advisory Board has established an ad hoc working group that will assess cancer centers as part of the designation process. The decision was approved unanimously with one abstention at the NCAB meeting March 17. 

Five years ago, Tyler Jacks took on a new challenge, becoming president of Break Through Cancer, a foundation that has pledged to spend at least $500 million to support research projects across top tier cancer centers.

“We’ve always argued that money comes and goes, but if you lose a generation of scientists—you can’t buy them back,” said Kelvin Lee, director of the Indiana University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

Two lawsuits filed within days of each other in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois claim that Tempus AI Inc. had violated the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act when it acquired Ambry Genetics and started to integrate its genetics data into its predictive models.

Last summer, Anirban Maitra, a pathologist specializing in pancreatic cancer, joined the NYU Langone Health Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center to co-lead its Gastrointestinal Cancer Center. 

As NCI paylines drop to 4%, cancer centers are tapping into their institutional funds to provide “bridge funding,” typically in $50,000 to $100,000 increments, to enable investigators to keep their labs open until better times return—next year God willing.

The American Cancer Society’s 2026 annual statistics report trumpets a symbolic milestone for oncology—for the first time, the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined has reached 70% for people diagnosed between 2015 and 2021 in the U.S.

Bayard “Barney” Clarkson, a pioneering leukemia researcher, a career-long member of the faculty of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and past president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research, died on Dec. 30. 

As trust in scientific and regulatory institutions frays and the meaning of “gold standard science” is increasingly contested, cancer research faces a credibility test of its own. 

John C. Byrd grew up in Augusta, a town of 2,000 or so in  northeastern Arkansas. 

Stepping into the NCI director’s job at the end of a nerve-racking year, Anthony Letai wants you to know that the federal government is not going out of the business of cancer research.

After three weeks of brutal combat, Richard Pazdur decided that he has had enough.

Richard Pazdur, FDA’s top oncologist who last week received a battlefield promotion to the role of director of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, is described as a stabilizing figure respected by major patient groups, oncology professional societies, and the industry.

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.

George F. Tidmarsh has resigned from his job as director of the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research in the aftermath of a lawsuit by a former associate and a probe into what an HHS spokesperson described as “serious concerns about his personal conduct.”

Love them or hate them, site visits have been a part of the culture of NCI-designated cancer centers for decades, shaping the process for admitting members to the elite club and influencing internal politics within institutions.

Kyle Walsh, a brain tumor expert at the Duke Cancer Institute, was named director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 90 regular members and 10 international members during its annual meeting Oct. 18-20. 

With major leadership changes, grant disruptions and terminations, and a stoked distrust in science, Steven Artandi, the director of Stanford Cancer Center, worries that young investigators will feel disenchanted by the U.S. research atmosphere and take their work and study elsewhere. 

FDA has initiated the approval of leucovorin calcium tablets, rushing them to market as part of a push from the Trump administration to identify potential treatments for autism spectrum disorder.

Anthony G. Letai, a physician-scientist at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute whose research is focused on apoptosis and functional diagnostics, has been tapped by the Trump administration to become the 18th director of the National Cancer Institute.

Grants are flowing out of NCI again to beat the fiscal-year end deadline and some cancer researchers are starting to feel cautiously optimistic about the future.

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. 

The House is on track to join the Senate in rejecting the Trump administration’s budget proposal that would cut NIH by $18 billion.

Phil and Penny Knight made a record-setting $2 billion gift to OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.

Mary Beckerle, a whitewater kayaker, has advice for all the folks in the cancer field: never catastrophize, never panic. 

Bits of good news for NIH flickered consistently over the past week. 

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.

“I don’t think any good cancer center director would be worth their weight in salt if they weren’t worried about something at night,” said Mark Evers, director of University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week cancelled a scheduled meeting of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a 16-member panel that writes guidelines for screening and prevention based on the principles of evidence-based medicine.

The windows down the hall from the operating room scrub sinks at MD Anderson Cancer Center look out at the tower of Texas Children’s Hospital.

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. 

George Sigounas, an expert in bone marrow transplantation, was named to the newly created post of chief science advisor at NCI. 

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?

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.

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.

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. 

After 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Government work isn’t what it used to be.

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. 

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. 

As NCI employees and others at HHS were receiving notices of termination, national cancer organizations called on Congress “to restore stability to NIH.”

Cancer data quoted in President Trump’s executive order last week have raised eyebrows among experts in cancer epidemiology. 

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?

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.”

Richard A. Rettig, the author of an authoritative history of the writing of the National Cancer Act of 1971, died on Aug. 7.