Dr. Anthony Letai Q&A

Over the course of his first six months as director of NCI, Anthony Letai has stepped into a moment defined as much by uncertainty as by opportunity. In this conversation with The Cancer Letter’s Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher, Letai said that many stories of the setbacks to the cancer program have been overblown or incorrect. And yet, amid political turbulence, while acknowledging frayed nerves of cancer researchers, Letai is implementing his scientific vision as director. He has spearheaded a public-private effort to speed up the development of therapeutic cancer vaccines and is making preparations for an institute initiative focused on functional genomics, his academic area of interest. “I think there’s real evidence of how [NCI has] delivered for the American people and the statistics, I think, you and I have talked about before—a 30% reduction in cancer mortality since 1990,” Letai said in an interview with The Cancer Letter. “I think that’s a great reflection of the global impact that the NCI has had. Whether it has to do with screening and prevention or new therapeutic initiatives, I think, you can trace nearly all of them back to having started and been perpetuated by National Cancer Institute grants.” In fact, Letai said he expects NCI to issue more grants this year than last and to spend more on extramural research than in the previous record-setting year. “I think it’s a credit to the NCI staff who’ve been doing an excellent job, given the many changes that have come their way, to keep business as usual, to keep the grant money flowing out to the extramural programs,” Letai said. Letai frames NCI’s constancy not as a political anomaly, but as a reflection of the institute’s long-standing mission and track record. The fundamentals of the cancer research enterprise remain sturdy, he said, and in several key respects, may be even stronger than widely perceived.