Money flowing but still tight
Dr. Robert Vonderheide, director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research, says that the field took hits last year but that public pressure turned the tide. “The entire country has been asking, ‘How valuable is cancer research to our society?’ And what we heard from the public and our patients is, it’s super-important.”
Federal research grants have started to flow again, after major interruptions over the past several months. Last week, NCI Director Anthony Letai told the Cancer Letter podcast that 22 competitive grants were awarded March 17 and another 167 awarded over the next three-plus weeks.
“NIH and NCI are focusing on high-impact areas of innovation, including mRNA-based cancer vaccines, alongside a greater emphasis on prevention and early detection,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an email Monday. “This effort has the potential to accelerate translational research and bring promising immunotherapies to patients more quickly through coordinated federal and private sector investment. Patients may see increased opportunities to participate in clinical trials for cell and mRNA-based cancer vaccines.”
Still, there are scars. One of Sayour’s proposals – to test an mRNA-based vaccine against a rare form of childhood brain tumor – was approved by the NCI last year. But after the agency reduced by nearly half its total number of awards, he says the money never arrived.
He says he expects the work to go forward, eventually, but it will take time to find the funding. “As you can imagine, I’ve shifted my approach to finances,” Sayour said. “The reality is, there’s a lot of dependency on the federal government, and if you put all your faith in one stock, you could go under pretty quickly.”
While federal funding remains tight, the most prominent mRNA cancer vaccines have attracted industry support and are not reliant on grants. Moderna says it expects to release data from the phase 3 melanoma trial this year. Genentech and BioNTech are sponsoring the global multisite test of the vaccine that Blechner received, with Balachandran leading efforts at MSK.
