Cancer Is Not Yet Cured, But Monsanto Still Pays

A $23 million grant for cancer-related research from the Monsanto Corporation to the Medical School still seems very important to both parties, two years after the contract was announced-so important that they have appointed an independent committee consisting of a former U.S. attorney general, three prominent scientists from the National Academy of Sciences and a former presidetn of CBS to ensure that any research results are applied in the public interest.

The grant also carries an unusual stipulation that drew some controversy when the grant was announced. Harvard's policy was not to give patent rights for new discoveries to any granting institutions. But Barry Wander, director of science communication for Monsanto, said yesterday his corporation has the rights to any commercial applications of discoveries made under its huge cancer grant.

A second apparent irregularity of the grant lies in how it is administered. While the Med School grant office handles all research funding from private corporations, the school's associate dean administers the Monsanto grant, Elizabeth Picard, director of grants at the Medical School, said yesterday.

The Monsanto award is now the school's largest private grant, she added.

Representatives from Harvard and Monsanto hear the five-man committee's deliberations, but no one from either group is actually on the committee, Wander says.

Committee members include William D. Ruckelshaus, former attorney general, Paul Flory, nobel laureate and professor of chemistry at Stanford, and Frank Stanton, former CBS president, Wander revealed yesterday.

The Med School professor in charge of the research said yesterday the grant has been very helpful--he's used it to pay for supplies and for the work of biologists, physiologists, medical students and electron microscopes. But M. Judah Folkman, Andrus Professor of Pediatric Surgery, cautioned that the work takes a great deal of time.

Cancer research is an emotional topic for many who have cancerafflicted friends and relatives, Folkman said, so he is wary of either saying the work is progressing well--in which case demands for an immediate cure would besiege him--or saying it progresses slowly--in which case he gets calls urging haste.

"Project R," as Wander calls it, centers around a chemical agent known as TAF (tumor angiogenesis factor).

Cancer tumors manufacture TAF, causing an animal to create blood vessels supplying the tumor with necessary nourishment. Folkman and his research team are investigating substances that interfere with TAF.

If TAF is inactivated, the body will not produce blood vessels to nourish the tumor, and without the vessels, the tumor can do no damage, according to an article by Folkman in the May issue of Scientific American.

With such a simple solution possibly in the works for such an enormous health problem, it's small wonder that academia, private industry, and the public-minded all have a finger in the pot.