UT cancer research leaders request legislators take a look at additional funding

Tax-payer cancer research funding is dwindling.

The Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas is predicting by 2023 they will have used all tax-payer funds that is why they are looking towards legislators to acquire additional funding.

Wednesday cancer research leaders and legislators discussed the future of research funding at UT Dell Medical School. UT Chemistry professor Dr. Jonathan Sessler shared his battle with cancer when he was a teenager.

"I was treated by radiation but then relapsed and few years later I went through a whole cycle of really nasty chemo therapy,” Dr, Sessler said. “The nausea drugs were not very good in those days and I basically spent a year in bed vomiting."

It was then he said a good physician from Stanford told him, “You’re a chemist. Find new cancer drugs.” So he did. In 2016 he was named UT’s 2016 Inventor of the Year.

His research has led to more than 75 U.S patents, a discovery of a new class of molecules and helped start up the biotech company Pharmacylics. "We are going to be the Houston Astros of Cancer a long time of frustration followed by wonderful success," said Sessler.

Sessler is among many UT researchers receiving funding by CPRIT.

The debate on whether or not tax-payers should fund cancer research comes a few years after CPRIT had more than 50 million dollars in grants mismanaged. An error Cam Scott Senior Director of Government Relations for the American Cancer Society said the agency has been working to ensure doesn’t happen again.

"We are going to have a decision to make about whether to continue in investing in this work that has put Texas in the forefront of cancer research or let promising scientific research sit on the shelves and collect dust," Scott said. "CIPRIT is now the model of accountability a model of transparency and really other state agencies could model off the work that CIPRIT does to make sure it's doing everything just right."

The American Cancer Society will host a policy forum series at several other institutions across the state to help start the conversation on cancer research funding.