Prosecutor: Dallas-Houston power struggle over cancer money led to official’s indictment
AUSTIN — A state cancer agency official loyal to Houston academic centers undercut a Dallas push to market anti-cancer drugs by duping his bosses into believing that the effort got needed approvals when it actually did not, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
Jerald “Jerry” Cobbs broke the law by failing to tell superiors at the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas that an $11 million grant to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics did not undergo a required business or scientific review, Assistant Travis County District Attorney Rob Drummond said as Cobbs’ trial opened.
“We had a rivalry between Houston and Dallas. Nothing is more Texan that that,” Drummond said.
Drummond showed jurors an email in which Nobel laureate Al Gilman of Dallas — at the time, the agency’s chief scientific officer — warned California financiers backing the Dallas project that Cobbs, whose help would be needed, “may be a butt head.”
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