On the heels of Nobel laureate Al Gilman’s announcement that he plans to resign as the chief scientific officer of the US$3-billion Cancer Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) and the leaking of his resignation letter, which raised concerns about the institute’s peer-review process, similar concerns and supporting details are now trickling out from the independent group of scientists who evaluate the Austin-based institute’s research grant applications.
In a letter dated 14 May, the organization’s scientific review council, chaired by Phillip Sharp of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, criticizes actions taken by the CPRIT management and oversight committee — actions that they say are “inconsistent” with statements by CPRIT’s executive director William Gimson defending the integrity of the institute’s peer-review system. The letter also reiterates the council’s faith in Gilman. In his 8 May resignation letter, Gilman had expressed concerns about CPRIT maintaining a “functional peer review system”.
Gilman told Nature in an e-mail that he believes that both letters address “the same basic issues”.
Among the most damning of the council’s concerns is their assertion that they were not consulted about a $20-million ‘incubator’ award — the largest ever made by CPRIT — that went to Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, both in Houston. Although the MD Anderson Cancer Center is slated to receive $18 million from the award, the council found their proposal too short (only 6.5 pages), too last-minute (it was approved three weeks after submission) and too skimpy on scientific detail.
“We will be viewed to have approved this award, and the failure to include us in the process calls into question our roles and the integrity of the review program in general. More importantly, this by-pass is inherently unfair to every scientist in Texas who participates in the CPRIT program,” the review council writes.
Incubator grants — to fund programmes and services aimed at commercializing new products for cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention — are not defined by CPRIT as requiring scientific peer review. But the council argues that the activities laid out in MD Anderson’s proposal sound like research. Additionally, “no product candidates were mentioned,” said the letter, “nor is a company involved”. This marked the first time CPRIT has issued an award in this grant category.
“It is clear that the rules surrounding submission, evaluation, and funding of incubators must be clarified,” Gimson said in a statement. “It is my intent to address the concerns that have arisen about the commercialization review process by soliciting input from CPRIT’s stakeholders.”
The review council also criticizes CPRIT’s oversight committee for putting on hold seven multi-investigator research applications that the review council recommended for funding. The letter alleges that this was done because of opposition from certain committee members to a significant amount of the funding going to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where Gilman once served as dean. The review council writes that this amounts to an unfounded accusation of bias on the part of both the council and Gilman, which they “vigorously deny”.
Gimson said that the decision was related to timing and budget issues and confirmed that all seven projects are up for consideration at a meeting of the oversight committee scheduled for 26 July. In his resignation letter, Gilman suggests that he wants to remain in his role through the summer, in part to prevent ”negative decisions” about funding from being made at the same meeting.