In a series of investigative stories that has been running for over two years, The Cancer Letter editor Paul Goldberg has been examining conflicts of interest at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the largest cancer hospital in the world. The Cancer Letter laid bare the controversy that would have ordinarily gone unnoticed, producing real-time coverage of that institution’s efforts to create a hybrid of an academic institution and a pharmaceutical company. The web-based weekly newsletter relied on thousands of pages of internal documents obtained under the Texas Public Information Act and a network of sources at MD Anderson and throughout academic oncology and regulatory agencies. The stories informed coverage by the Houston Chronicle, the journals Scieell as other news outlets.
In May 2011, the University of Texas Board of Regents placed Ronald DePinho, a brash, industry-friendly basic scientist, in the top job at the hospital that employs 19,000 people and has the budget of over $3 billion. In one story, The Cancer Letter focused on the central element of DePinho’s strategy: formation of an in-house drug company at MD Anderson. This administrative entity, an institute, would interact with the industry. The project involved DePinho’s wife and collaborator Lynda Chin, also a cancer researcher, who moved with him from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. DePinho and Chin were given carte blanche to spend public money on luxurious appointment of the office suite, because the regents and the executives of the UT System shared their belief that pharmaceutical company executives who would be visiting MD Anderson needed to be entertained in style as they negotiated agreements with MD Anderson.
Documents obtained by The Cancer Letter show that Texas taxpayers spent as much as $2 million to renovate the office space occupied by Chin’s institute. The Cancer Letter obtained nearly 680 pages of documents, showing how Texas taxpayers’ money was used to pay for translucent walls ($210,000), a collection of modern classic furniture ($27,920), and a specially outfitted credenza ($5,141) that concealed a refrigerator ($2,704). The idea that a an executive seated on Chin’s red leather Florence Knoll settee ($7,754) while reviewing papers spread on a van der Rohe table ($1,670) would be more likely to license compounds from MD Anderson is highly vulnerable. Only a few people would ever see Chin’s posh quarters.
Meanwhile, the institution was forcing its clinical faculty to meet ever-increasing financial targets. If faculty members were to attend a meeting of a professional society, they were expected to make up the time lost in the clinic. While The Cancer Letter story, dubbed “Furnituregate” in the oncology circles, gave the name to the controversy, the reversal of fortune of AVEO Pharmaceuticals, the company DePinho and Chin had founded and which for a time made up the bulk of their personal wealth, raises questions about compliance with federal laws. On May 18, 2012, DePinho appeared on the CNBC Closing Bell With Maria Bartiromo program and touted his company’s stock. The Cancer Letter was the only publication to note that it was inappropriate for an employee of the state of Texas to offer investment advice. Such advice was even more troublesome since DePinho was recommending the company he founded, ran and held stock in. (Continued under ‘Results’)