EDRN Bi-Monthly Steering Committee Call 

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 pm CT/1:30 pm PT 

Present (in BOLD):

• Chair: Arul Chinnaiyan, University of Michigan
• Co-Chair: Karen Anderson, Arizona State University
• NCI: Sudhir Srivastava, Felicia Evans-Williams, Sidney Fu, Nick Hodges, Indu Kohaar, Amit Kumar, Guillermo Marquez, Altaf Mohammed, Christos Patriotis, Angela Petruzzelli, Neeraj Saxena, Wendy Wang, Matt Young
• NIDCR: Zhong Chen
• Arizona State University: Josh LaBaer
• Baylor: Fasiha Kanwal, Erich Sturgis
• Boston University: Marc Lenburg, Jennifer Beane-Ebel, Erin Kane
• Case Western Reserve University: Sanford Markowitz
• City of Hope: Cristian Tomasetti
• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Sapna Syngal
• Eastern Virginia Medical School/Old Dominion University: John Semmes
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center: Jackie Dahlgren, Ruth Etzioni, Ziding Feng, William Grady, Christopher Li, Royce Malnik, Amanda Paulovich, Lesley Wilkerson, Cecilia Yeung, Yingye Zheng
• George Washington University: Laura Rozek
• Icahn School of Medicine Mt. Sinai: Pei Wang
• JPL: Daniel Crichton, Heather Kincaid
• Johns Hopkins University: Daniel Chan, Ie-Ming Shih, David Sidransky, Victor Velculescu, Hui Zhang, Zhen Zhang
• Massachusetts: Steven Skates, Alan Cha
• Meso Scale: Anu Mathew, Martin Stengelin, Mingyue Wang
• Moffitt: Antonio Amelio, Anna Giuliano, John Heine, Julie Rathwell, Matt Schabath
• NIDCR: Zhong Chen, Amanda Melillo
• NIST: Hua-Jun He
• New York University: Anirban Maitra, Harvey Pass, Leopoldo Segal
• PNNL: Tao Liu
• University of California, Los Angeles: William Hsu, Mike Palazzolo
• University of California, San Diego: Ludmil Alexandrov, Silvio Gutkind, Scott Lippman University of California, San Francisco: Fatemeh (Flora) Momen Heravi
• University of Colorado: Sachin Wani
• University Health Network: Thomas Kislinger
• University Hospitals/Cleveland Medical Center: Amitabh Chak
• University of Illinois, Chicago: Xiaowei Wang
• University of Maryland: Sanford Stass 
• University of Michigan: Neehar Parikh, Steve Chinn
• University of North Carolina: Nicholas Shaheen
• University of Nebraska: Surinder Batra, Brittney Dickey
• University of Pittsburgh: Randall Brand, James Herman, Robert Schoen, Christine Worthington 
• University of Toledo: James Willey
• University of Texas MD Anderson: Robert Bast, Robert Bresalier, Sam Hanash, Leo Lei, Anirban Maitra, Ed Ostrin, David Wilson
• University of Texas Southwestern: Amit Singal
• University of Washington: William Grady, Andy Hoofnagle, Savannah Partridge
• Washington University: Hua Li
• Vanderbilt: Stephen Deppen, Eric Grogan, Michael Kammer, Jeff Tosoian
• Yale University: Sara Pai, Abhijit Patel

Discussion

Action Items from this call:

1. NIH Priorities: This document outlines what the priorities of the NIH are and the ways it impacts the review and funding of grants. https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/nih-director/statements/advancing-nihs-mission-through-unified-strategy

Minutes to January 21st Call: Approved as written. 

NCI Updates: Sudhir Srivastava said the funding process is getting complicated because it’s not just about the percentiles.  One the grant is reviewed, it is reviewed internally by the Division and then it goes to our SPO which is at NCI leadership and then it goes to a PA which is called a political appointee. Next it gets the final endorsement for funding or no funding. At the same time, we still continue to follow the second tier of review, which is NCAB. But between NCAB and BSA.  All grants, no matter the score, have to go through this process. It requires a lot of work for NCI Program Directors to justify, even though someone might have scored very well, but we still need to justify each and every ground.

EDRN Steering Committee Meeting, March 4-6, 2026, Houston Texas: The agenda was discussed. The meeting is focused more on discussions than presentations, and on the last day, the Fireside Chat will happen—either Larry Norton or Ian Thompson will participate. On Tuesday afternoon, the AHEAD group will have a 4-hour steering committee meeting.

Upcoming EDRN Meetings:

• EDRN Steering Committee Meeting, March 4-6, 2025 in Houston, TX at MD Anderson
• Fall, 2026 EDRN 15th Scientific Workshop: Wednesday-Friday, September 23-25, 2026.  A planning committee is needed to create the agenda and invite speakers.

Reference Set Working Group Update:  Robert Bresalier gave an update. He noted that many people are asking for discovery sets as opposed to validation sets, more international applications are coming in and there is a steady flow of applications.  However, the attendance by the group has not been optimal. Yingye Zheng said that the group needs to streamline the approval process. 

Next Call: Wednesday, April 15h at 3:30 pm ET/12:30 pm PT