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/