Funding is halted pending review
Cancer
“CPRIT processes had not been followed.”
The institute is home to the nation’s secondlargest pot of cancerresearch money, behind the National Institutes of Health, and has awarded nearly $700 million. But it has come under intensifying scrutiny as several scientists, including two Nobel laureates, resigned in protest claiming the agency was charting a new politically driven path that put commercial interests before science.
The Peloton revelation is the latest blow to the institute, which launched in 2009 to widespread acclaim among scientists and cancer survivors but has spent the past year unraveling. Dozens of scientists have resigned from the agency’s peer review panels en masse i n recent weeks, some of whom criticized the fund for “hucksterism” and “suspicion of favoritism” on their way out the door.
Peloton’s application would have been presented to the agency’s oversight committee by Jerry Cobbs, the agency’s chief commercialization officer. Cobbs announced his resignation this month, and his last day was set for Friday.
Members of the oversight committee are appointed by Gov. Rick Perry and other elected leaders. The panel has the final say on whether an award is funded, but under agency rules, all applications must be reviewed by an outside panel of peer reviewers who evaluate the scientific and commercial merits of the proposal.
The agency’s statement did not explain how Peloton’s application made it through the process without anyone noticing that a review never took place. It only said that Cobbs “improperly included” the proposal in a slate of other recommendations to the oversight committee in December 2010.
Attempts to reach Cobbs were not immediately successful Thursday evening.
Bill Gimson, the executive director of the institute who vowed that his reeling agency would recover from the growing onslaught of criticism at its annual conference in October, said in response to the audit’s findings that the agency must have the state’s trust.
“We proactively initiated this comprehensive review in the effort to be transparent and ensure good stewardship,” Gimson said.
Peloton’s funding has been halted and the company’s application is undergoing a second review, the agency said.
Started behind a push led by cancer survivor Lance Armstrong and Perry, the institute spent its first five years basking in praise and industry awe of the unprecedented amount of taxpayer dollars committed to a staterun, cancer-fighting effort. But those plaudits abruptly gave way to rebukes starting in May, and the fissures came from within.
Dr. Alfred Gilman, the agency’s chief scientific officer and a Nobel laureate, announced his resignation following a $20 million award that never received a full scientific review. The money was for a so-called incubator project at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, one of the country’s top research institutes. Gimson has said the type of proposal didn’t require a full scientific review under agency rules but has since conceded missteps in how that award was handled.
A liberal political action committee asked Travis County prosecutors Thursday to investigate links between state grants and campaign donors to Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.
James C. Moore, director of Progress Texas PAC, asked Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to conduct a preliminary investigation of the operations of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, the Emerging Technology Fund and the Enterprise Fund. “The public evidence is that money is being handed out based upon political connections and not on business or scientific merit,” wrote Moore.
Perry’s office said the programs are authorized, overseen and held accountable by members of the Texas Legislature.