Anthony Letai reflects on Year One as NCI Director: “The NCI is in business”

“I don’t know of a single grant that left my desk that was not approved and funded,” NCI Director Anthony G. Letai said on this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast.Letai recapped his first year as NCI director in conversation with Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, and laid out his priorities for the year ahead. In the conversation, Letai discusses his goal of calming uncertainty at the institute, and why he hopes the metrics from his first year as director—which he lays out in detail—will change the way NCI is portrayed by the media. “I hope I don’t see any more reports of NCI cutting funding, because it just is not consistent with the facts,” Letai said. NCI has given away all the money it intended to, Letai told Paul. “He's saying that NCI has not been cut back,” Paul said. “In fact, it's giving out more money and more grants than ever before. So, that's reality.”While NCI is reporting thriving extramural research spending, that is not to say that the Trump administration hasn’t attempted—and succeeded in making—a litany of policy actions that imperil the cancer research enterprise, Paul said. “[Letai] calmed the thing down,” Paul said. “He calmed the place down. But also, I don't want to sound like everything is great or that I think everything is great. I mean, the administration really did try to cut NCI and NIH by about 40%, and the Republicans in Congress and Democrats in Congress stopped that. So, there's that. And we've been covering efforts by OMB to put in political review of grants essentially, and all funding. That's not happened. There was just a few weeks ago actually a discussion of an executive order which has not been issued. Well, we'll see what happens after the midterms.“So, I mean, we're just covering politics, but we have to be realistic about what's actually happening and what's not happening. And what's not happening is the cutbacks in cancer research.”Letai credited NCI staff with the institute’s success in getting extramural funding out the door during a tumultuous time. “These are all record-high numbers. And it’s a real tribute, I think, in a challenging year, that the NCI staff, despite a lot of public doubt, just kept their nose to the grindstone and week after week, month after month, did their job, as I said they were doing.”Stories mentioned in this podcast include: With Year One metrics in hand, Letai is ready to “bring it home” in Year TwoMichael Caputo appointed to President’s Cancer PanelTwo years after FDA’s breast density notification rule, there is still no standard for follow-upMD Anderson study suggests psilocybin may prevent chemo-induced neuropathyA transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20261007-letai/