2023
Annual Report
In September 2023, Director Renee Wegrzyn, Ph.D. announced the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) competitively selected Texas to serve as one of its three regional hubs for ARPANET-H, a nationwide health innovation network. The ARPANET-H Customer Experience hub is headquartered in Dallas at Pegasus Park. ARPA-H will identify transformative and broadly accessible solutions to the most challenging health care problems, from cancer, Alzheimer’s and AIDS to equitable health care delivery and cost containment.
ARPA-H’s decision to locate the ARPANET-H Customer Experience hub in Texas is continued validation of the state’s well-earned leadership reputation in healthcare research, development, and technological innovation. The creation and success of CPRIT exemplifies Texas’ unprecedented commitment to bold approaches for seemingly intractable scientific challenges and helped set the stage for the ARPA-H decision. Like CPRIT, ARPA-H is committed to funding transformative research that meets urgent challenges facing cancer patients and their families.
Bringing the ARPANET-H Customer Experience hub to Texas culminates a two-year effort by the Coalition for Health Advancement and Research in Texas (CHART). CPRIT, a principal member of CHART, brought together a broad alliance of biotechnology ventures, hospital systems, research institutions, and economic development organizations throughout the state to make the case for Texas’ culture of transformation and problem solving. Significant bipartisan support from the Texas Congressional Delegation was also crucial to Texas’ success.
An early indicator of CPRIT’s impact on advanced cancer research is one of ARPA-H’s first awards, a $45 million cooperative agreement grant to a research team led by CPRIT Scholar Omid Veiseh, Ph.D., a bioengineer at Rice University. Along with his co-investigators, Dr. Veiseh heads a team of engineers, physicians and multidisciplinary specialists in synthetic biology, materials science, immunology, oncology, electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, and other fields spanning 20 different research labs. The project, dubbed THOR, for Targeted Hybrid Oncotherapeutic Regulation, will develop a sense-and-respond implant technology called HAMMR (Hybrid Advanced Molecular Manufacturing Regulator) that could slash U.S. cancer-related deaths by more than 50%. Other Texas institutions involved in this effort include CPRIT grantee institutions The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Houston.
CPRIT achieved an important milestone in 2023 having awarded its 300th CPRIT Scholar recruitment grant. As of August 31, 2023, CPRIT has invested $865.6 million to recruit 302 CPRIT Scholars to 20 universities and research institutions across the state, adding the equivalent of 8,000+ years of productive research to Texas.
CPRIT’s statutory mandate requires CPRIT to promote the state’s research superiority. The CPRIT Scholar program gives Texas an unprecedented competitive edge in recruiting the world’s premier researchers - dramatically advancing exceptional cancer research efforts and promoting economic development in Texas. CPRIT created the Scholar program in 2009 to help Texas’ universities and research institutions attract preeminent scientists at all career stages. Beginning with the first CPRIT Scholar grant awarded to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to recruit Ralf Kittler, Ph.D., from the University of Chicago’s Institute for Genomics in November 2009, the CPRIT Scholar program has been a powerful tool to significantly augment the research prowess at Texas institutions.
The national and international recognitions garnered by CPRIT Scholars include the 2018 Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine, two Lasker Award recipients, four NCI Outstanding Investigator Awardees, multiple HHMI Investigators, and three Pew Foundation Scholars, amongst others. Seventeen CPRIT Scholars are members of the National Academies of Science, Medicine, or Engineering, four are Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators, and four are National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigators.
These outstanding scientists greatly enhance programs of scientific excellence and position Texas as a leader in the fight against cancer. Bringing 302 CPRIT Scholars and their laboratories to Texas is comparable to establishing another NCI comprehensive cancer center in the state. Once coming to Texas, CPRIT Scholars have made significant discoveries related to preventing, detecting, treating and curing cancer, assumed leadership roles at several research institutions throughout the state, created scientific centers of excellence, established bold new programs, mentored hundreds of the next generation of scientists, and formed companies translating promising findings into cancer treatments.
CPRIT released the Texas Resource Guide (www.texasresourceguide.org) in 2023 to help innovators operate in Texas. This online database provides information and resources about service providers and other entities – including potential sources of investment – that support early stage and developing life science companies wanting to start, expand, or relocate operations in Texas.
As the only state agency tasked by the Legislature to fund life science innovation in cancer research and prevention, the Texas Resource Guide is a natural outgrowth of CPRIT’s mission to support and expand the Lone Star State’s life science ecosystem. Thanks in large part to the sizable and diverse network of vendors, accelerators, co-working offices, wet lab space, biomedical manufacturing, chambers of commerce, biotech trade groups, venture funding, and business-friendly practices, Texas has the resources, the will, and a strong, bipartisan track record for implementing bold approaches to addressing health research and technology challenges.
In 2023, a Texan became the 400,000th person to receive their first cancer screening through a CPRIT-funded project. As of August 31, 2023, CPRIT-funded screening projects have detected more than 39,000 cancers and cancer precursors and helped to navigate patients to treatment.
Evidence-based clinical screenings are crucial to reducing the impact and cost of cancer because they help clinicians detect cancer and cancer precursors before symptoms develop. Finding cancer in its early stages means that it is easier to treat - greatly reducing the financial and emotional burden of cancer. Cancer prevention screening tests offered by CPRIT-funded projects include mammograms for breast cancer, fecal immunochemical tests and colonoscopies for colorectal cancer, Pap tests for cervical cancer, and low-dose computerized tomography (LDCT) for lung cancer.
Often a CPRIT prevention project is a person’s first introduction to a cancer screening test. Research shows that once people have had their first cancer screening test, they are more likely to continue screening for cancer. After completing the screening test, the project staff routinely connects the patient to a medical home, which in turn leads to an increase in routine preventive care.
Since 2010, CPRIT has invested $355 million in 291 community-based cancer prevention projects spanning the entire state, prioritizing areas and people disproportionately affected by cancer or those with obstacles, such as rural location to screenings. These CPRIT-funded programs have delivered over 9 million prevention services, including education, provider training, screening, genetic counseling, vaccinations, and survivorship services to Texans in all 254 counties.