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Nov 11, 2023

UCSD's Moores Cancer Center retools clinical trials office as director steps down for 'personal' reasons

The Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health is retooling its clinical trials

The Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health is retooling its clinical trials office just as its director is stepping down for "personal" reasons after less than a year at the helm.

The two are unrelated, according to UCSD officials.

UCSD also emphatically denied a report by The Cancer Letter, an independent weekly news publication that covers oncology, that claims Moores is on the precipice of losing its National Cancer Institute designation as a comprehensive cancer center, the only such designated center in the region.

"No one is in danger of losing comprehensive [designation]," Dr. John Carethers, UCSD's vice chancellor for health sciences, told the La Jolla Light on June 7.

The Cancer Letter's editor and publisher, Paul Goldberg, told the Light that the publication "stands by the story."

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Moores spokeswoman Jacqueline Carr said in a statement that the center "is in a leadership transition while simultaneously redesigning its clinical trials operations."

Moores Director Dr. Joseph Califano made his "own personal decision" to step down, Carethers said.

Califano was not immediately available to comment. Last year he succeeded Dr. Scott Lippman, who had been director since 2012.

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Dr. Joseph Califano III, who specializes in head and neck cancer, has been with UCSD Health since 2015. He replaces Dr. Scott Lippman, who will remain at UCSD and lead a national program.

Carethers said Califano will remain director of Moores’ Hanna and Mark Gleiberman Head and Neck Cancer Center and co-leader of the Structural and Functional Genomics Program. He also will retain his role as a UCSD professor and member of the Moores Cancer Center, Carethers said.

UCSD soon will name an advisory committee to conduct a nationwide search for a new Moores director.

Meanwhile, the cancer center is redesigning its clinical trials office to increase the number of trials offered, which declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carethers said.

"As the region's only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center, clinical trials are a central part of the Moores Cancer Center mission of advancing the science of potential cancer therapies," Carr said.

The number of clinical trials is still down from pre-pandemic levels, Carethers said, a function of a slower rebound in San Diego due to higher costs of living and labor, which leads to challenges in getting adequate staffing.

"Our goal is to get those trials back up," he said. "We need to get our act together because clinical trials are an important part of not only our regions but it's also an important part of how the NCI recognizes us as a comprehensive cancer center."

However, Carethers reiterated that there is no current risk of Moores losing its designation.

The National Cancer Institute did not respond to the Light's request for comment.

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"There's always change" in institutions like Moores, Carethers said, whether in leadership or the direction of various departments.

"As part of deliberate performance improvement initiatives, and in preparation for core grant renewal, Moores Cancer Center proactively requested that Kelly Willenberg & Associates conduct a virtual review of its clinical trial processes," Carr said.

The review was at Califano's direction, Carethers said.

"He asked some consultants to look at the clinical trials and that's exactly what they did," Carethers said.

The work was "something … most campuses do if they’re always continuing to look for improvement" every few years, he added.

The draft report on the review "cites zero incidents of harm to any clinical trial participant," Carr said.

With more than $73 million in annual research grants, some 400 members, 13 disease teams, five research programs and national experts in cancer care, "Moores Cancer Center not only is an asset to the university, it's an asset to our community," Carethers said. "We’re going to do our darndest to make sure that continues and meets the high excellence standard so that patients can get the appropriate care for all their cancer needs here." ◆

Updates

12:55 p.m. June 8, 2023: This article was updated with a comment from The Cancer Letter's Paul Goldberg.