Support Texas’ cancer efforts

Significant treatment advances have been made in the fight to end cancer, yet the disease continues to shorten the lives of children and adults in Texas and globally. Reducing deaths from acomplicated disease like cancer is like putting together a huge puzzle, one piece at atime.

In 2007, Texas voters approved a bold referendum to invest $3 billion to create the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute ofTexas (CPRIT) at a time when federal research funding was on the decline. This year, Proposition 6 on the Nov. 5 lets voters decide whether to continue funding CPRIT with an additional $3 billion investment. CPRIT has provided much-needed funds for research and recruitment of top researchers, prevention and screening programs, education of new researchers, community outreach and education, and investments in startup and other small biotechnology companies to deliver new discoveries to patients.

CPRIT has helped Texas cancer research institutions in crucial ways, such as the recruitment of 181 prominent researchers, including the 2018 Nobel Prize winner Dr. James Allison to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

CPRIT’s $1.7 billion in academic research funding has yielded 473 new patents and nearly $1.1 billion in additional research funding by its awardees who will continue to increase scientific discovery and add to the Texas workforce for years to come.

This vital state funding has resulted in the creation of 51 research core laboratories. Additionally, 36 biotech companies have been created, expanded or brought to Texas through $437.1 million in CPRIT’s product development grants attracting an additional $3.08 billion in non-state funding.

The financial benefits to the state are impressive:

• $58 million in annual state and local tax collections, and development of more than 10,100 jobs due to CPRIT activities, and the addition of $720 million to the Texas Gross Product and $500 million in personal income.

• Thanks to CPRIT, the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine, the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at The University ofTexas Southwestern in Dallas and have joined MD Anderson as National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, a prestigious and highly effective group of 50 leading cancer research centers.

• 10 percent of CPRIT funding goes for cancer prevention, screening and outreach services that directly impact Texas citizens in all 254 counties of the state.

• More than 1.3 million screening and diagnostic services have been performed to identify early and more curable breast, cervical, colorectal and other cancers, including over 366,767 individuals who had never been previously screened.

• Smoking cessation services have been provided to more than 235,000 Texas residents, and vaccination rates for the human papilloma virus (HPV) to prevent cervical and oral cancers have greatly increased with CPRIT funding.

• One CPRIT-funded prevention program at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center distributed more than 500,000 test kits to detect traces of blood in the stool, a proven screen for early colorectal cancer, which is certain to reduce mortality from this common cancer in the years ahead.

The last CPRIT research grants will be awarded in 2021, completing the initial investment, yet in 2018 alone, cancer costs the state of Texas $41 billion in medical expenditures and losses due to deaths in 2018, and this number rises each year.

CPRIT has not only impacted thousands of Texans and others on a global scale, it has paid for itself as it has created a cancer research-and-service infrastructure benefitting us for decades. This crucial source of support has been a sound investment.

Osborne, M.D., is vice chair ofthe CPRIT University Advisory Committee and director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine. Barton, Ph.D., is vice chair of the CPRIT University Advisory Committee; Dean, Graduate School Biomedical Science, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.