Richard Pazdur, founding director of FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence and long-time FDA visionary, has accepted the top job at FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research following George F. Tidmarsh’s dramatic ouster from the position.
“This is big. Because, you know, the whole field of oncology over the past 25 years—and [Pazdur has] run the oncology division and decided which drugs would get on the market, which drugs won't get on the market. Everybody is speaking ‘Pazdurese,’” said Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter. “Even if you don't like Pazdur, you are speaking Pazdurese if you're doing oncology. And he's shaped it.
“I don't think anybody has had more impact on this field than he has,” Paul said. “So, now, here he is, and I suspect there's some people who are unhappy, but I think there's, what I'm sensing is a lot of dancing in the streets.”
In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Paul, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, talk about the details of Tidmarsh’s departure and how Pazdur’s leadership may change FDA.
Tidmarsh resigned from his position Nov. 2 following a lawsuit by a former associate and a probe into what an HHS spokesperson described as “serious concerns about his personal conduct.”
"FDA is important to the industry,” Paul said. “The industry makes money by having a solid FDA, where people are competent, where decisions are made in a way that is at least explainable."
Solid FDA leadership is central to the success of the field of oncology.
“This is just as important as the fact that you know, the administration's plans to change over NIH and really gut it has been stopped,” Paul said. “This is as important as the fact that Tony [Anthony] Letai is now the NCI director.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
The Directors: Ruben Mesa and Kunle Odunsi on how immigration and diversity accelerate discovery
City of Hope’s leadership in lung cancer: Precision, innovation, and a vision for cure
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251112-tidmarsh/
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.
“I was born in Nigeria, I grew up in Nigeria, I went to medical school in Nigeria, and then I did some of my training in England, in the United Kingdom,” Odunsi said. “My residency in obstetrics and gynecology was at Yale School of Medicine, so it was a very welcoming environment.
“In fact, many of us in my class, four out of six, were international graduates, because Yale had the philosophy at the time that we’re just going to take the best from wherever, and that was my experience. I felt just as good as anyone else. It was a great time.”
Ruben Mesa, president of Advocate Health Center Cancer Service Line, is the child of Cuban refugees and agreed with Odunsi that international collaboration is vital for a healthy research ecosystem.
“I trained at Mayo Clinic, and when I was a resident and fellow, I think about some of the extraordinary individuals, folks like Kunle, again, who came and had trained from other countries, but were just exceptional individuals and really moved forward the science and brought tremendous skills also from their medical training,” Mesa said.
As part of its crackdown on immigration under the Trump administration, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services announced that as of Sept. 21, H-1B visa petitions will require a $100,000 fee in an attempt to “curb abuses and protect American workers.”
“For someone like myself, I don’t think Yale would’ve paid $100,000 to get me an H-1B visa at the time, and I’m sure it’s going to be hard,” Odunsi, who is also the director of the Comprehensive Cancer Research Center, the AbbVie Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and dean for oncology at University of Chicago Medicine, said. “But as I said, and as you pointed out, we have to keep our eyes on the target, on our target, and that is cancer.”
A transcript of this episode is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251107_1/
One of the first things that happened as part of President Donald Trump’s “flooding of the zone” in January was the disappearance of the site visit as part of the Cancer Center Support Grant review.
In last week’s cover story, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, wrote about “the high level of consternation over the disappearance of the site visit from the CCSG review” and how cancer centers are adapting to the new, centralized review process.
In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Paul and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, talk about how the oncology community initially expressed a lot of concern about NIH taking over the Cancer Center Support Grant review.
“But at the AACI meeting, which was here in town [Washington, DC] Oct. 19 to 21st, there was some really interesting discussion of this and about what actually is happening.”
NIH convened a review group that is “pretty spectacular,” Paul said. “I mean, uber-experienced people, focused, who were able to do the reviews, and some actually are saying, ‘You're going to like this more than you like the previous system,’ which runs counter to our expectations. Because we were catastrophizing, and with good reason. I mean, sometimes, you really have to catastrophize if you're realistic.
But in this case, what seems to have happened is the cuts did not materialize, thanks to Republicans in Congress and Democrats, as well. It was bipartisan. Support for NIH is still there.”
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Cancer centers adapt to life without site visits as NIH changes CCSG review
Class action complaint alleging GRAIL insider fraud resubmitted after dismissal
How GLP-1RA drugs are reshaping patient physiology and the future of oncology
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251105-ccsg/
Early endpoints have the potential to get effective drugs to patients faster, but granting approval to drugs—even accelerated approval—comes with the risk that ineffective or even harmful drugs will be given to patients.
“If we don't have these intermediate endpoints to get new drugs to patients, we'd have to wait… I think somebody mentioned in one of the conversations I had while I was reporting on this, that the readout would be upwards of 17 years to get information about these new drugs that are being developed if we rely on PFS, overall survival, the sort of traditional clinical endpoints,” Jacqurelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, said, “So, that's sort of the general push, to make it so effective drugs, can get it to patients faster. Now, with that, of course, comes a lot of risks. And that's the balance, the conversation. That's why this is something that's so fun to cover.”
In this episode of In the Headlines, Jacquelyn and Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, talk about Friends of Cancer Research's ctMoniTR project, a large-scale effort that aims to improve the efficiency of the development of intermediate endpoints.
The ctMoniTR project aims to learn and improve upon previous development of early endpoints, such as minimal residual disease, which is now an accepted early endpoint for the accelerated approval multiple myeloma.
Jacquelyn and Paul also talk through Paul’s story about the new director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and Jacquelyn’s story about the recent results from GRAIL’s PATHFINDER 2 study, which is intended to support an FDA premarket approval application.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Duke brain cancer researcher Kyle Walsh named director of NIEHS
GRAIL to use new study results to seek FDA approval of Galleri MCD test
Experts warn that loss of carcinogen surveillance threatens to increase cancer incidence
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251029-ctdna/
“Our goal was very clear from the beginning, which was to develop a user-friendly simple chat-like interface that would provide specific high-quality answers to questions that our members would bring, utilizing only our content,” said Clifford A. Hudis, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and executive vice chair of the Conquer Cancer Foundation.
On this week’s episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Hudis spoke with Paul Goldberg, publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, about his guest editorial, “ASCO and Google Cloud set forth a vision for using AI to modernize health care and advance oncology.”
Hudis co-wrote the article with Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
In the episode, Hudis, Jacquelyn, and Paul talk about the collaboration between the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Google Cloud to develop an AI tool to better access ASCO’s guidelines—and how to do so safely and ethically.
“This required tuning the AI tool, in this case, to do essentially two things. And I'm sure I'm oversimplifying it, but number one, it restricted its answering to only our source documents. It couldn't look elsewhere,” said Hudis. “Number two, it was tuned towards facts and away from creativity. And there is a lot of technical background to this, but my understanding therefore is that tunes down the likelihood of it inventing an answer and makes it more reliant on facts. And then number three, and the biggest innovation I think for us at the time, was understanding that clinicians ultimately are absolutely responsible for whatever they do to patients.”
Hudis said that ultimately, the problem that was solved wasn’t the one he was anticipating.
“We thought we were solving this utilitarian access to the data problem,” he said. “But, I think in the end, the problem we're solving is building trust and support in our community to embrace this new technology, which, as I'm sure we'll talk about, I think is going to be ubiquitous, nearly universal.”
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Under the lens: Taking a close look at the NIH and FDA declarations on animal-based research
Study finds no correlation between cancer burden in catchment areas and cancer centers’ CCSG funding
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251022-cliffordhudis/
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this week’s episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast features three oncology leaders whose research focuses on identifying and solving health disparities specifically in the Latinx community.
Ruben A. Mesa, Amelie Ramirez, and Luis Carvajal Carmona spoke about the concrete impact of federal policy stances on cancer outcomes in Latinx patients.
Mesa, who is president of the Advocate Health Cancer National Service Line, president of the Atrium Health Levine Cancer, and executive director of the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that his mother recently celebrated her 15th anniversary as a breast cancer survivor.
“Just fantastic to be able to celebrate with her,” Mesa said. “And I reflected on why was it that I was able to celebrate with her as a survivor and not be here sad that I had lost my mother to breast cancer many years ago?”
Mesa identified two key drivers: advances driven from advances in cancer surgery, radiation, and medical therapies, and the fact that his mother’s cancer was caught early.
“Cancer was caught early, [which is] such a crucial piece,” Mesa said. “And at the point in her arc, she was already at that point when she had cancer, she was a U.S. citizen. She had insurance. She was employed. But if she had been lacking those things, maybe her cancer would not have been caught early. She could have had a late-stage presentation that she may not have had the other aspects in terms of health that she might've had otherwise.”
These challenges are not new. But changes in federal policy after President Donald Trump’s inauguration are exacerbating the problem.
“Immigration status had always been a bit of a concern, but it's a much greater concern when there is a fear of a very aggressive stance in terms of trying to find individuals that are undocumented,” Mesa said.
Mesa is also the senior vice president of Advocate Health, vice dean for cancer programs and the Charles L. Spurr MD Professor of Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Ramirez is the director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research and chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio. She is also associate director of cancer outreach and engagement at Mays Cancer Center.
Carvajal Carmona is associate vice chancellor and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at University of California, Davis.
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251015/Hispanic-Heritage-Month/
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.
“The uncertainty in the current system is giving some people pause, especially younger people, whether they’re Americans or whether they trained abroad, as to whether the United States is the right place to spend their careers,” said Artandi, who is also the Laurie Kraus Lacob Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Jerome and Daisy Low Gilbert Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Stanford University. “So, I am up at night worrying about the future of American leadership in cancer science and in science more broadly.”
“And these changes reverberate,” said Eric Winer, director of Yale Cancer Center. “The fact that there’s this threat to scientists from around the world to be able to come to the U.S. is a real turnoff for a lot of people.”
There is an existential threat that the U.S. might not be the best place to do cancer research right now, said Winer, who is also president and physician-in-chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital, Yale New Haven Health System.
“This is the time where I think all of us in the field want to step hard on the research accelerator, we don’t want to back off,” Winer said.
However, Winer pointed out that he will not be the one making scientific discoveries in 10-20 years. It’s the future generations, the very ones who are feeling uncertain about entering into an unstable NIH, that worry him.
“And if we lose a generation, or even half a generation of people, it’s a huge problem for cancer medicine and cancer science,” Winer said.
Winer and Artandi appeared together on The Directors, a monthly series which focuses on the problems that keep directors of cancer centers up at night. Otis Brawley, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, appeared as a discussant on this episode.
A transcript of this episode is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251010_1/
“Patient stories, as you know, can either make or break a story,” said Laurie McGinley, a former health and science editor at The Washington Post who is now on the board of Patient Action for Cancer Research, or PACR, a new advocacy organization aimed at organizing and amplifying patient voices in an effort to protect life-saving federal health research.
In last week’s issue, The Cancer Letter reporter Sara Willa Ernst wrote about how PACR is building a repository of patient stories to better connect policymakers to the people most affected by their decisions.
On this week’s episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Sara spoke with Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, and McGinley.
In the episode, affectionately dubbed “the Ladies’ Podcast,” Sara, Jacquelyn, and McGinley talk about Sara’s process of reporting and writing the story, the role of a group like PACR in the current political climate, and how McGinley—who was part of a team at The Wall Street Journal that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on AIDS—decided to join the board of PACR.
“From a professional standpoint, and I guess this takes us into the wider discussion, it's just so obvious that it's important to have patients and patients stories at the center of this debate, this very difficult debate that's going on now about funding research of all different kinds, especially cancer research,” McGinley said. “And this is not news to anyone in journalism or anyone in the cancer community. We're not trying to preach to the choir, and people already know this, but we're just trying to make it somewhat easier and to augment efforts to do this.”
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Former NCI official's nonprofit seeks to tell the stories of cancer patients
U.S. government shuts down Impact on NCI uncertain as administration threatens more RIFs
Sexual and gender minoritized cancer patients deserve better
Seeding NCORPs with academically-focused oncologists can advance the national research agenda
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251008-LaurieMcGinley/
With little fan fare, Anthony Letai, a highly respected physician-scientist, was sworn in as the 18th director of the National Cancer Institute on Sept. 29. Then, two days later, on Oct. 1, the government shut down.
The news of Letai’s apparent appointment was broken last week in the media, with no word from the White House. Although HHS has published a press release announcing Letai’s appointment, the White House is still silent on the matter.
Meanwhile, Trump’s FDA initiated an unusual regulatory pathway for leucovorin—asking the drug sponsor to reinstate a 25-year-old drug application—in order to begin the process of approving the drug for autism.
This week on The Cancer Letter Podcast, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, discuss the oncology community’s enthusiastic support for Letai’s appointment, the government shut down, and the strange regulatory future of leucovorin.
“Here's the issue,” Paul said. “Leucovorin is a branded drug up through about 1997. By 1997, the company asks to just let it go to the generics. ‘The heck with this thing.’ Then, by 1999—GSK is the sponsor—GSK just withdraws from the whole thing, which makes perfect sense. That's what pioneer companies do, because who wants to be updating the label on something you're not selling? Who wants to be responsible for that? So, that's just typical behavior.
“So, a quarter of a century ago. Now, fast forward to now and 26 years later, really, and there's this sort of a political push, not necessarily scientific, but maybe a little so, to get this thing approved for autism, for a form of autism. So, the only reason to get that approval is so you can start promoting it.
“So, really, probably for the first time in the history of FDA and therefore likely for the first time in human history, the company was allowed, or in this case, really probably prevailed upon, to renew, revive, its NDA, and then seek a supplemental NDA for this indication.”
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Population-based cancer surveillance is a national treasure at risk, by Eric B. Durbin, Karen L. Knight, Betsy Kohler, and Sarah Nash
Ci4CC’s 24th Symposium & Workshop set to focus on precision oncology powered by data intelligence, by Stephen D. Nimer
Earlier diagnosis, better outcomes: Telemedicine has found a home in oncology, by Hardeep Phull
Championing nurse wellbeing as a strategic priority, by Kim Slusser
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251001-nci-director/
With the fiscal year drawing to a close, grant funding from NCI is picking up speed, offering a glimmer of hope to cancer researchers who are beginning to feel cautiously optimistic about the road ahead.
Following firm bipartisan pushback against the White House’s proposed budget cuts for FY2026, both the House and Senate have reaffirmed their support for biomedical research.
At last week’s annual symposium marking the 50th anniversary of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center first securing its designation, former NCI directors Ned Sharpless and Kim Rathmell expressed optimism about the future of cancer research.
In the podcast, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, reflected on the former directors’ sentiments.
“It's very interesting to hear this and very reassuring, but also not really that surprising, because Congress, both the House and Senate, are poised to either give NIH a small increase or maybe keep things at flat funding, so that's not the 40% cut that the administration wanted,” Paul said.
The Republican party is to thank for saving NIH’s budget, said Paul.
“I think we've felt a great sense of urgency, at the same time a lack of agency, since the upheaval began at NIH,” Claire said.
“Its not easy, things aren’t great,” Paul said. “What stays, what goes, it’s not really clear. If you were to look at the damage report, there is damage. But it’s not fatal, it’s a bunch of little flesh wounds.”
And at the moment, the money is flowing, Paul said.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
AACR Cancer Progress Report makes the case for federal investment in cancer research
Paul Thurman: Urgently needed: A funding mechanism to insulate cancer research from political whims
FDA cracks down on direct-to-consumer ads, including the Hims & Hers Superbowl blitz
A transcript of this episode is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250924-nci/
Readers of The Cancer Letter and listeners of The Cancer Letter Podcast are familiar with the impact of President Donald Trump’s first nine months in office on the field of oncology. Now, the threats posed to oncology are being brought to the attention of a general audience—Jonathan Mahler, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, wrote an in-depth article about how the Trump administration’s actions have brought chaos, uncertainty, and damage to the oncology research community.
In this episode of In the Headlines, Mahler spoke with Paul Goldberg, publisher and editor of The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, about becoming immersed in the history of oncology research (going all the way back to Mary Lasker and the National Cancer Act), and the personal and professional impact of the seemingly-beaurocratic policy changes coming down from the White House.
Mahler’s article introduces a lay audience to the intricacies of the oncology research enterprise, and how this complex network of actors—including federal agencies, academic and community cancer centers, patient advocacy groups, and professional societies—was necessary to produce the drastic improvements in survival and quality of life outcomes of the last 50 years.
Mahler has no qualms describing Trump’s actions as a deliberate attack on biomedical research.
“The NIH and NCI, as you guys know better than anyone, are designed to be apolitical institutions,” Mahler said. “They are designed to be insulated from political attack. So, in order to undermine them, to really have to do this kind of damage to their agenda, takes some work and takes some forethought. And I think you see that when you start to look at how all of this unfolded beginning just days after the inauguration, that it was a deliberate strategy. And so, you kind of have to see it that way, and people who are working there certainly saw it that way.”
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Harvey Golomb, past chair of UChicago's Department of Medicine, dies at 82
Bonnie Addario, lung cancer survivor and advocate, dies at 77
Vinay Prasad regains role as FDA chief medical and scientific officer
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250917-Jonathan-Mahler/
In the face of the unknown, two cancer center leaders discuss planning for the future, recovering from their losses, and holding on to what they still have.
Right now, there are more questions than answers.
“It's hard to plan, and try to make sure that what we're doing in the cancer research space is going to be funded,” said Ben Ho Park, director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. “What programs, some of which have already been pulled, will not be pulled? Or even if they're cut back, what is that cut back going to look like?”
Park, who is also the Benjamin F. Byrd, Jr. Chair in Oncology and professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology-Oncology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center appeared on The Cancer Letter Podcast with Suresh S. Ramalingam, director of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine.
Ramalingam, who is also the Roberto C. Goizueta Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research at the Emory University School of Medicine, and editor-in-chief of Cancer, said bringing in new investigators and researchers is paramount, but he worries if funding uncertainties will turn away early career faculty members.
“We're providing some supportive grants, pilot funds to pivot them to some new priority areas. And hopefully those efforts will bear fruit. But definitely, this has left a lot of people scrambling,” Ramalingam said. “Even if their grants have not been cut, they're worried about whether they will be able to renew it and continue their programs. Will they be able to keep the staff in their labs employed so they can continue their research work? Have they all been topics of day-to-day conversations within the cancer center?”
Park shares Ramalingam’s concerns, not only for existing and future investigators, but also for trainees.
“The trainees, they're not blinded to this at all,” Park said. “They're seeing it and they're thinking, ‘Wow, what kind of future do we have as a cancer researcher going forward?’ So, I think that there's many downstream and domino type effects that will be felt for years to come. And we've seen some of it. I've seen attrition in some of our senior trainees who just decided this isn't the right career path for them because it's just too stressful.”
Park’s refrain during this time is something his father used to say: “Tough times don't last. Tough people do.”
Park and Ramalingam, along with discussant Beverly Ginsburg Cooper, managing director for research at Huron Consulting Group, appeared together on The Directors, a monthly series which focuses on the problems that keep directors of cancer centers up at night.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology sponsored this episode. ASCO plays no part in the editorial direction of this podcast.
A transcript of this episode is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250912_1/
As NIH and NCI funding is negotiated in Congress, Paul W. Thurman felt compelled to crunch some numbers. He compared the U.S.’s cumulative funding for NCI to the funding slated for ICE—the latter of which vastly outweighs the former—and asked whether the funding priorities of the federal government are properly representing the nation’s mortality.
“I think the way a government or the way a people spends its money talks not only about its priorities, but about its morality,” Thurman says in this episode of In the Headlines. “And I would argue that perhaps we're losing a bit of our moral compass by appropriating in this disproportionate way towards something that does not cause nearly the death and destruction and psychological damage that a disease does. And when you start reducing the number of cancer researchers that can be hired…”
Thurman is a professor of management and analytics at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University Medical Center appeared on the podcast as a special guest to discuss the editorial he wrote for last week’s issue.
In this episode of In the Headlines—the first since The Cancer Letter’s August publication break— The Cancer Letter’s editorial staff talks about the three major events covered in last week’s jam-packed issue:
The House subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies reported out its version of the spending bill for FY26, which would provide $46.9 billion for NIH’s base, representing a $99 million (0.2%) increase over the FY25 level of $46.8 billion,
The appearance of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before the Senate Finance committee, where he was questioned about his changes at the CDC, and
The meeting of the National Cancer Advisory Board, at which NIH Director Bhattacharya made a rare appearance and fielded questions from oncology leaders about funding, political oversight in scientific grant review processes, and DEI.
In the podcast, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, debrief about what these events mean for the oncology community.
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250910-NIH-funding/
When Robert A. Winn was named director of the University of Illinois Cancer Center in 2015, he knew that the skills required to be a successful cancer center director were very different from the skills he drew upon to be a successful scientist. So, he formed an informal, personal mentorship team.
“I know they got tired of me, but I called them almost once a month,” Winn said.
In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Winn spoke with Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, about the program Winn started to address this gap: the Executive Leadership Academy for Cancer Centers.
“Not every cancer center director even has [a personal mentorship team] or even is knowledgeable that they should do that,” Winn said. “By having this ELAC program, it will not only give them leadership skills about having a network, how do you do it, how do you run your finances? Not just how do you do your own science, but how do you now transition to figure out how to create science themes for an institution i.e., a cancer center, and how to actually be familiar with the CCSG? I think that it just makes all the sense in the world.”
Winn established the Executive Leadership Academy for Cancer Centers in order to set cancer center leaders up for success.
“Cancer center leadership has really been done by apprenticeship, meaning that you find someone who's a good scientist and you say, ‘Yeah. Of course, they're going to have good administrative skills,’” Winn said. “And then, we put them in roles like program leaders or we put them in roles like associate directors and deputy directors. And when they struggle, we sort of scratch our head, like, ‘Why are they struggling?’”
Cancer center leaders have unique responsibilities—including preparation and submission of Cancer Center Support Grant applications.
“[I realized] there was not really any single training specific to the CCSG aspects, the cancer center support grant, as well as the cancer center that we actually had in the United States. And so, I had a big bold idea and an ‘Aha!’ moment that, why not actually fill in that gap with an actual leadership academy that focuses, not on just leadership, but actually on CCSG knowledge and content, and start with a good solid foundation of that pool of future leaders?”
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250903-robert-winn/
In his new book, “No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson,” Gardiner Harris, who was previously the public health and pharmaceutical business reporter for The New York Times, talks about the history of the overuse of red blood cell growth factors in oncology.
In conversation with The Cancer Letter editor and publisher Paul Goldberg, Harris and Goldberg discuss their parallel coverage of ESAs—erythropoiesis-stimulating agents.
Harris’s book, released last April, is a New York Times bestseller.
“EPO is the largest cancer drug disaster in American history. There is no one who was more important in revealing that disaster than Paul Goldberg,” Harris said.
Goldberg and Harris go way back. “Just by way of disclosure, Gardiner and I had regular lunches at the Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown for most of the time that Gardiner was in Washington,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg and Harris tell the story about how this class of drugs was approved, aggressively marketed in oncology, and widely used in ways not supported by data. As sales of these products reached record-setting levels, data started to show that overprescribing was causing harm to cancer patients.
As data emerged (in part as a result of reporting by Harris and Goldberg), FDA stepped in with black box warnings and a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy. It’s a complicated story with many moving parts, and in this episode Goldberg and Harris spar over who knew what when, what could have been done better, and what has been learned.
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250827-gardiner-harris/
Phil and Penny Knight made a record-setting $2 billion gift to OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.
The gift—which appears to be the largest single donation ever made to any U.S. university, college or academic health center—was announced together with an organizational restructuring that makes the Knight Cancer Institute into a self-governed entity within Oregon Health and Science University.
The move also brings back the OHSU cancer center’s longtime leader and star scientist Brian Druker, who will serve as the inaugural president of the new organization, called the Knight Cancer Group.
“That gives us the ability to align the responsibility of effectively spending this groundbreaking record setting gift with the authority to do that,” Druker said to The Cancer Letter. “We've become a little bit like a Fred Hutchinson or a Huntsman. We’re following in their footsteps and we're really grateful to have this opportunity to continue to make an impact for patients with cancer.”
The Knight Cancer Group will have its own board of directors and will govern the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute and manage OHSU’s cancer services.
Read more and access the transcript at https://cancerletter.com/conversation-with-the-cancer-letter/20250814_1/
In the last three years of her life, Andrea Werblin Reid wrote 150 poems on living with ovarian cancer and end of life. Werblin Reid died of ovarian cancer in 2022. Her third collection of poetry, “To See Yourself As You Vanish,” will be published Sept. 9.
In this episode of In the Headlines, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor with The Cancer Letter, talks to Werblin Reid’s husband, Angus (Gus) Reid, and Werblin Reid’s friend, Sarah K. Sawyer. The two co-authored a story in last week’s issue of The Cancer Letter, “Andrea Werblin Reid’s unflinching poetry documents the realities of cancer care, clinical trials, and loss—Her collection, “To See Yourself As You Vanish,” will be published three years after her death.”
In the podcast, Reid and Sawyer talk about the challenge of putting together Werblin Reid’s poetry collection after her death.
“What she left us with was a large stack of work, certainly the pages number in the hundreds,” Reid said. “I had 150 in my head, I think, but maybe 170 of various levels of completion with a lot of overlap between them. She'd been writing in fragments and creating poems out of those. So, part of the work of producing the book and turning that into a book was what they call ‘sequencing and selection,’ in the industry, which is kind of a brutal process.”
Werblin Reid had “started on some sequencing before she was so rudely interrupted,” Reid said, but Reid and Sawyer and Werblin Reid’s other colleagues had to cut a collection of over 150 poems in half before the editing process was complete.
Reid left a lot of the writing decisions to experts. His role in the process was making sure that the poems stayed true to the essence of his late wife.
“It is a cancer book. It's a very unforgiving, unsentimental book, but she was funny,” Reid said. “I really didn't want a book that came out like she was just suffering and miserable all the time while she was writing it, or that she'd lost that sense of humor, because she hadn't. She was always mad as hell about it. She wasn't happy. But also, she was still Andi.”
Reid ends the podcast with a reading of Werblin Reid’s poem, Clinical Trial.
CLINICAL TRIAL
Andrea Werblin Reid
In exchange for a public chance at a longer private life, you give them,
not your body, but your body’s one error in calculation. the swerve,
detour, blunder unique to your system. you give them the soft scribble
of your consent. in exchange for a future where you might run
among penguins, or consider the altitude of a lark, his small brown body
racing vertically into the sky, you agree to be watched like a hawk.
Asked hundreds of times if you’re ok, if there’s anything they can get you.
longer life most people think. glass of water most people say,
since there is often some small thing lodged in the throat.
you remember that larks sing when they fly, unlike any other bird.
Her collection of poetry is available for preorder wherever you buy books.
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
The Directors: Mary Beckerle and Neli Ulrich on delivering cancer care across five states
Lou Weiner: Poetry and art help us imagine my mother’s world as a hidden child of the Holocaust
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250813-AndreaReid/
Mary Beckerle, a whitewater kayaker, has advice for all the folks in the cancer field: never catastrophize, never panic.
“Back in the day, I used to whitewater kayak, and you’ve got your paddle, and you’re in the water.
“And when you hit that rapid, the one thing you know you have to do is take that paddle and dig it into that wave and pull yourself through with gusto and with determination. And you can’t respond to this chop by just holding your paddle up in the air and going, ‘Uh-oh,’ or you lose every ounce of potential to shape the situation,” said Beckerle, who is also a cell biologist and CEO of Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Beckerle appeared on The Cancer Letter Podcast with Cornelia Ulrich, chief scientific officer and executive director at Huntsman, and Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and former CEO of the American Cancer Society.
Beckerle is stepping down as CEO at Huntsman on Sept. 1. She and Ulrich have been working hard to explain the value of science, NIH, and the contribution NCI-designated cancer centers make to the health of the nation.
“This has probably been one of my biggest jobs over the past six months—to communicate and be out there and help bridge that gap that has been maybe artificially raised by some people about science and policy,” said Ulrich.
“And really, I mean, what Mary said is so true. No matter where we go, people care about cancer, and no matter whether they are ‘red or blue,’ their families are affected by cancer. And we have had that strong bipartisan support and we continue to foster that.”
Beckerle and Ulrich spoke to Paul Goldberg on The Directors, a monthly series on The Cancer Letter Podcast which focuses on the problems that keep directors of cancer centers up at night.
Knudsen, appearing on the podcast as a discussant, said she thinks Beckerle and Ulrich’s “winning strategy,” is their “people first, but science forward,” approach.
“What you heard from both of them was a sense of urgency to take this innovation that’s happening in cancer prevention, detection, and cures, and push that science to people and enhance their ability to gain access to these breakthroughs,” Knudsen said.
The American Society of Clinical Oncology sponsored this episode. ASCO plays no part in the editorial direction of this podcast.
A transcript of this episode is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250808_1/
While doing somewhat-routine reporting on this year’s Senate Appropriations Committee bills, Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, quickly realized that he was seeing a full bipartisan rejection of President Donald J. Trump’s plan to defund and therefore dismantle biomedical research in the United States.
In this episode of In the Headlines, Paul, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, discuss the GOP-led turn of events that reversed the Trump administration’s cuts to NIH, as well as the very public departure of Vinay Prasad from FDA following a snowballing of attacks on his political purity led by Laura Loomer.
“Basically what we learned is that instead of cutting NIH, the Senate is actually giving NIH a raise, and the House has essentially an allocation that does not reflect the president's priorities of cutting NIH by 40%. God knows why,” Paul said.
The bill represents one of the first pieces of good news for NIH and other federally funded biomedical and health research institutions since Trump’s inauguration.
“We are impartial, we cover science. But we believe in science. We believe in spending money for science,” Paul said. “We believe in all of this, or else we should be doing something else.”
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
U.S. News & World Report expands evaluation of outcomes in cancer subspecialties
USPSTF doesn’t lean right or left—it’s about data, not politics
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250806-nih-prasad/
Do multi-cancer detection tests provide a net benefit? NCI aims to answer this question, beginning with the Vanguard feasibility trial which recently started accruing patients.
Sara Willa Ernst, The Cancer Letter’s newest reporter, made her The Cancer Letter podcast debut this week to talk about her first cover story: The launch of NCI’s Vanguard feasibility study.
Sara was joined by Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, to talk about the Vanguard trial, which is the newest development in the story of multi-cancer detection tests.
“Is early detection always good? Especially when we’re talking about the very very early stages?” Sara said.
This is one of the questions at the heart of NCI’s approach to studying MCDs, and one that is becoming increasingly urgent at a time when science is imperiled by funding cuts.
“When are you doing good, and when are you doing harm?” Paul said. “Which is actually incredibly timely, because the word is that the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, all of the members are likely going to be fired by Kennedy, and AHRQ is going to be cut. So the greatest achievement of evidence-based medicine in the world is about to be dismantled.”
Stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Robert Winn: If Medicaid gets massive cuts or goes away, where will these patients get care?
FY25 paylines drop to 4th percentile—a historic low—as NCI braces for Trump’s FY26 budget cuts
Right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer comes for FDA’s Vinay Prasad
The effects of NIH, FDA cuts will be felt for decades, CBO report estimates
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250730-mcds/