这个Ron DePino/Linda Chin看来离辞职不远了# Biology - 生物学
S*s
1 楼
相当的疯狂啊
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/06/m-d-anderson-president-goe
M.D. Anderson president goes on CNBC, extols his own company
During the last couple of weeks Todd Ackerman and I have been reporting on a
controversial $20 million grant received by the University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University.
The story broke on May 11 when Nobel laureate Al Gilman resigned as chief
scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, which
has 10 years to appropriate $3 billion in taxpayer funds on cancer research.
DePinho
Gilman’s primary concern is that M.D. Anderson’s part of the proposal,
which was to be funded up to $18 million, was approved by CPRIT “without
scientific review, without a score, and in record time.” In other words,
the grant review process was done outside his purview and, in his view, a
questionable manner.
M.D. Anderson’s part of the grant has Dr. Lynda Chin as its principal
Path: investigator. Chin, a well-regarded scientist, is also the wife of Dr.
Ronald DePinho, who M.D. Anderson hired last year to be its new president.
Chin and DePinho are also co-founders of a modestly successful biotech
company, AVEO Oncology.
The grant has proven problematic. M.D. Anderson has offered to resubmit it
to CPRIT after questions were raised about it and the approval process, and
CPRIT has agreed to re-review it. The UT System is also now probing the
process. Chin’s involvement in the grant has heightened concerns among some
M.D. Anderson faculty about how DePinho and Chin handle conflicts of
interest. Many have contacted Todd and myself to express such concerns.
Ok, so that’s a long way of saying there is, at a minimum, a perception
among some faculty at M.D. Anderson that DePinho has conflicts of interest.
This isn’t going to help that perception.
It’s a video — shot on May 18, after the CPRIT story had broken — of
DePinho appearing on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo in advance of the biggest
cancer meeting of the year, the ASCO Annual Meeting, which begins today. He
does so as a cancer expert, and is clearly identified as the president of M.
D. Anderson.
The interview starts off with DePinho explaining why he believes recent
developments, including genomics, nanotechnology, gene manipulation and
other research trends, are bringing cancer cures close to the clinic. It’s
a historic moment, he says.
The interesting part comes in the middle. Here’s a transcript of three
questions (Bartiromo is in bold):
Are there companies out there that you think are most promising?
In the biotech sector you have to be really careful because you have to
understand which companies are driven by good management and driven by the
kinds of scientific advancement that I’ve mentioned, and there are a few of
them out there. Historically of course Genentech was one of the prime
examples of this. More recently …
They were the first one to come out with a targeted treatment.
Right so you can think about Herceptin and so on, those are very important
advances, and in fact some of the most effective drugs have come out of the
idea of using science to shepherd cancer drug development. A company that I
was involved in founding, Aveo Pharmaceuticals, one of the more successful
biotechs…
That’s AVEO as a symbol?
That’s correct, has exploited science driven drug discovery and it’s about
to announce, or has announced already publicly, and it will present in
detail at ASCO, a very effective drug that has a superior safety profile for
renal cell cancer, a major unmet need. So these are massive advances in our
ability to do something about a disease that has long been very refractory.
Why is this significant? Because Bartiromo asks DePinho what companies, from
a stockholder perspective, are most promising. He begins with some history
and then proceeds to trumpet his company, and his company alone. And not
modestly. Additionally, as part of the entire interview, he never really
trumpets his own institution which is helping to lead the way in the “
massive advances” he describes.
As president of M.D. Anderson DePinho is paid a base salary of $1.4 million
a year. I’m not certain that his duties as a representative of the esteemed
cancer center, on national television, include promoting his own company.
UPDATE: Responding to questions about this interview from The Cancer Letter,
DePinho apologized for the appearance:
“I am a public official in a position of trust, and I should never comment
on any of my personal holdings or give investment advice,” he said to The
Cancer Letter. “It was a mistake for me to do so on the CNBC interview.”
DePinho blamed the medium. “It was live TV,” he said. “It was a very fast
-moving interview, which in the context of what Maria and I were talking
beforehand, versus what we were talking on air, etc. It unfolded the way it
did. And it will not happen again.”
Apologies notwithstanding, the episode illustrates failure on the part of
the University of Texas System to manage DePinho’s conflicts. Analysis of
this new cluster of conflicts has to start with AVEO.
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/06/m-d-anderson-president-goe
M.D. Anderson president goes on CNBC, extols his own company
During the last couple of weeks Todd Ackerman and I have been reporting on a
controversial $20 million grant received by the University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University.
The story broke on May 11 when Nobel laureate Al Gilman resigned as chief
scientific officer of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, which
has 10 years to appropriate $3 billion in taxpayer funds on cancer research.
DePinho
Gilman’s primary concern is that M.D. Anderson’s part of the proposal,
which was to be funded up to $18 million, was approved by CPRIT “without
scientific review, without a score, and in record time.” In other words,
the grant review process was done outside his purview and, in his view, a
questionable manner.
M.D. Anderson’s part of the grant has Dr. Lynda Chin as its principal
Path: investigator. Chin, a well-regarded scientist, is also the wife of Dr.
Ronald DePinho, who M.D. Anderson hired last year to be its new president.
Chin and DePinho are also co-founders of a modestly successful biotech
company, AVEO Oncology.
The grant has proven problematic. M.D. Anderson has offered to resubmit it
to CPRIT after questions were raised about it and the approval process, and
CPRIT has agreed to re-review it. The UT System is also now probing the
process. Chin’s involvement in the grant has heightened concerns among some
M.D. Anderson faculty about how DePinho and Chin handle conflicts of
interest. Many have contacted Todd and myself to express such concerns.
Ok, so that’s a long way of saying there is, at a minimum, a perception
among some faculty at M.D. Anderson that DePinho has conflicts of interest.
This isn’t going to help that perception.
It’s a video — shot on May 18, after the CPRIT story had broken — of
DePinho appearing on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo in advance of the biggest
cancer meeting of the year, the ASCO Annual Meeting, which begins today. He
does so as a cancer expert, and is clearly identified as the president of M.
D. Anderson.
The interview starts off with DePinho explaining why he believes recent
developments, including genomics, nanotechnology, gene manipulation and
other research trends, are bringing cancer cures close to the clinic. It’s
a historic moment, he says.
The interesting part comes in the middle. Here’s a transcript of three
questions (Bartiromo is in bold):
Are there companies out there that you think are most promising?
In the biotech sector you have to be really careful because you have to
understand which companies are driven by good management and driven by the
kinds of scientific advancement that I’ve mentioned, and there are a few of
them out there. Historically of course Genentech was one of the prime
examples of this. More recently …
They were the first one to come out with a targeted treatment.
Right so you can think about Herceptin and so on, those are very important
advances, and in fact some of the most effective drugs have come out of the
idea of using science to shepherd cancer drug development. A company that I
was involved in founding, Aveo Pharmaceuticals, one of the more successful
biotechs…
That’s AVEO as a symbol?
That’s correct, has exploited science driven drug discovery and it’s about
to announce, or has announced already publicly, and it will present in
detail at ASCO, a very effective drug that has a superior safety profile for
renal cell cancer, a major unmet need. So these are massive advances in our
ability to do something about a disease that has long been very refractory.
Why is this significant? Because Bartiromo asks DePinho what companies, from
a stockholder perspective, are most promising. He begins with some history
and then proceeds to trumpet his company, and his company alone. And not
modestly. Additionally, as part of the entire interview, he never really
trumpets his own institution which is helping to lead the way in the “
massive advances” he describes.
As president of M.D. Anderson DePinho is paid a base salary of $1.4 million
a year. I’m not certain that his duties as a representative of the esteemed
cancer center, on national television, include promoting his own company.
UPDATE: Responding to questions about this interview from The Cancer Letter,
DePinho apologized for the appearance:
“I am a public official in a position of trust, and I should never comment
on any of my personal holdings or give investment advice,” he said to The
Cancer Letter. “It was a mistake for me to do so on the CNBC interview.”
DePinho blamed the medium. “It was live TV,” he said. “It was a very fast
-moving interview, which in the context of what Maria and I were talking
beforehand, versus what we were talking on air, etc. It unfolded the way it
did. And it will not happen again.”
Apologies notwithstanding, the episode illustrates failure on the part of
the University of Texas System to manage DePinho’s conflicts. Analysis of
this new cluster of conflicts has to start with AVEO.
