M.D. Anderson, Baylor receive massive grants

Funds will be used to recruit top scientists for cancer research

Texas’ state cancer agency this week awarded M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine $16 million to help recruit three star scientists.

The Houston institutions dominated the latest round of Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas grants, which focused solely on the recruitment of top researchers. The grants have received less attention than those the agency gives for research but may be a bigger boon to the state, luring world-class scientists, “rising stars” and promising first-time, tenure-track faculty members to Texas institutions.

“We continue to assemble a critical mass of expertise in cancer research in Texas through the recruitment of top scientists who have demonstrated academic excellence, innovation and potential for impact,” Wayne Roberts, CPRIT’s chief executive officer, said in a news release. “These grants have put Texas on the map as a destination for the cancer researchers in the world.”

The recruitment program has now brought 105 scientists to Texas, totaling more than $340 million. Baylor and M.D. Anderson got $18 million of the $26 million allocated Wednesday.

CPRIT is the state’s 10year, $3 billion assault on cancer, launched in 2009, after voters approved a 2007 bond issue to fund it. The agency has awarded more than 800 academic research grants totaling $ 1.05 billion and helped bring 110 cancer research- ers to Texas. In all, it has given out nearly $1.5 billion to different Texas institutions.

The agency rebooted in fall 2003, after scandals uncovered in 2012 and early 2013 threatened its continued existence. The scandals, involving the mismanagement of three grants totaling $56 million, resulted in the agency being shut down for 10 months and the Legislature’s passage of a reform bill that removed the entire governing board and instituted additional safeguards to prevent abuse from occurring again.

The new awards included two $6 million grants to recruit top-tier scientists to M.D. Anderson — one for Ziaodong Cheng, a structural biologist at Emory University; and one for Dr. Filippo Giancotti a cell biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The cancer center also was awarded a $2 million, firsttime, tenure-track grant to recruit a post-doctoral scholar in genetic engineering at the University of California at San Francisco.

Baylor was awarded a $4 million grant for the recruitment of Bing Zhang, a “rising star” in molecular biology at Vanderbilt School of Medicine.

The University of TexasAustin, with a $6 million recruitment grant for a top-tier scientist, and UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, with a $2 million grant for a firsttime, tenure-track scientist, received the other awards.

Only the scientist targeted by UT-Austin has accepted his offer. The remaining three scientists are still in negotiations with the universities.