Bill Gimson, Executive Director Of Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, Asks To Resign
AUSTIN, Texas — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3
billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its
executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public
corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered
agency.
No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into
the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox,
director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit.
But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled
agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company
bypassed review.
That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for
CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer
research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced
Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of
resignation.
"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I
can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.
Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in
low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against
cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board
must still approve his request to step down.
His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a
span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman
resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that
the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned
it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."
Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs,
whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs
included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required
outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to
Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.
Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said
that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit
financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't
satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last
week for more assurances that no one personally profited.
Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office
received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is
charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his
most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.
"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.
Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney
general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox
said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators,
but he made clear the probes would be separate.
Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative
taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised
questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin
proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of
scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the
agency's rules.
Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse
from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the
agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was
putting commercial product-development above science.
The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr.
Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged
that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson
was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency
when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the
concerns and allegations.
"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.
Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review
panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of
the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she
felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.
Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research
dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.
Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't
previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step
down was his own.
Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with
brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner,
who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer
survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a
constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to
finance a war on disease.
Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.
"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.
Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred
questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that
its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required
under agency rules.
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