Reeling Texas cancer agency OK'd faulty $11M award
By By PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press / December 2, 2012
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Leaders of Texas’ embattled $3 billion cancer-fighting effort approved an $11 million grant to a biomedical company even though the proposal wasn’t reviewed, according to an internal audit that deepens the troubles of a state agency that has been denounced in recent months by some of the world’s top scientists.
The discovery was uncovered during an internal review of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and its grant to Peloton Therapeutics Inc. in 2010 was among the first it handed out. The Dallas-based company’s commercialization award remains one of agency’s largest taxpayer-funded grants to date.
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The Peloton revelation is the latest blow to CPRIT, 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 in recent weeks, some of whom criticized the fund for ‘‘hucksterism’’ and ‘‘suspicion of favoritism’’ on their way out the door.
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Gilman accused the agency’s oversight board of ramrodding the project through the application process, despite the proposal being just six pages long. 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.
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