CPRIT Chair wants missing emails found

Following-up on the 2010 grant awarded to the start-up Peloton Therapeutics:

Cancer agency chair wants missing emails found

By Todd Ackerman, Brian Rogers | December 7, 2012 | Updated: December 8, 2012 8:41am

The board chairman of the state cancer agency said on Friday he wants an investigation to locate emails related to an $11 million grant awarded in 2010 without proper review.
In a statement, Jimmy Mansour said he will recommend at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas board's January meeting that the agency employ forensic experts to find emails about the proposal and process. A new review says emails about the unreviewed grant "are currently unavailable."
"I am determined that the emails be located," wrote Mansour, chairman of CPRIT's oversight committee.
The agency a week ago acknowledged that a commercialization grant to a start-up biotech company in Dallas, Peloton Therapeutics, was never scrutinized by peer review committees set up to evaluate applications. The next day, much of the state's political leadership demanded answers from the agency about what happened.
At an agency meeting Wednesday, executive director Bill Gimson tried to provide some of the answers. Calling the grant's approval the result of a misunderstanding, he attributed the mistake to CPRIT being so young it didn't have all checks and balances in place. The grant was one of the first four commercialization grants awarded by the agency.
Retained 30 days
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Read the rest in The Houston Chronicle of 12/08/12 under CITY & STATE   B2