This video presents a nanoparticle drug delivery system (OMP00001) developed by Omni Nano that addresses the fundamental challenge of drug delivery in solid tumors, particularly pancreatic cancer. The system uses a polymeric nanoparticle to simultaneously deliver two complementary drugs: cyclopamine (which modulates the tumor stroma to create access) and paclitaxel (which directly kills cancer cells). This dual approach achieves approximately 150-fold higher tumor-to-blood drug concentration ratios while minimizing systemic toxicity, effectively changing tumors from inaccessible to accessible for both drugs and the immune system. The technology represents a significant advancement in overcoming the dense tumor microenvironment that typically limits chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapy effectiveness.
CPRIT Oversight Committee Meeting -- May, 20th, 2026Added:
Okay.
I will call to order this meeting of the oversight committee. It is 8:31 a.m. Mr. Taylor, please proceed with the roll call. Here.
>> That means >> counted for >> here.
>> Thank you. I will note that Dr. Cummings is joining us via video. Thank you.
Members, you have the draft minutes from the February 18th oversight committee meeting in your agenda packet behind tab one. Are there any corrections to the minutes as circulated?
Hearing none, the chair will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the February 18th oversight committee meeting.
>> So move.
>> All in favor vote I.
>> Any opposed?
>> Motion carries.
Our next agenda item is public comment.
Texans created SERIT. Opening our meetings with public comment underscores this board's commitment to transparency and accountability. Mr. Ellis, has Secret received any requests to provide public comment.
>> No, Madam Chair.
>> Thank you. The chair now recognizes Miss Doyle to introduce Dr. Leslie Sloan, who will give a grantee presentation.
Good morning, Oversight Committee members. Uh, I am thrilled to introduce one of our grantees. Uh, she is the CEO of Omni Nano, which is a company that Secret approved for an award a couple years ago. Um, Dr. Sloan is a chemist by training. Um, but the very interesting um, thing for me about Dr. loan. And a great story for Secrets is this is actually her third Secret Company that she has been associated with. So she's also worked with Agla and uh with Panther Therapeutics. Um so she is doing exactly what we hope in terms of the development of the life science ecosystem in Texas. we are trying to build this experienced group of leaders that can help develop these great ideas that are coming out of uh Texas Labs and and moving them further in the pathway.
So, I think you're really going to enjoy her presentation. Um, and I will turn it over to her now.
Hi, nice to see you guys and be here today. As Kristen said, this is my third um trip through a company with Secret and uh it's done amazing things for uh molecules that we're developing. And the last one that managed that we managed to get across the finish line was at Aglia where we um developed a rare disease asset that's now marketed in both the US and Europe. So, um it's really fun to be part of building this. I grew up in um a small town in Oklahoma and when I first came out and went to graduate school, um I I went to the Northeast and then I wasn't able to come back home because there wasn't an industry that actually supported my degree in chemistry and my aspirations to do uh pharmaceutical development. So, it's really fun to be part of the building in Houston, in Austin, and Dallas of sort of this ecosystem that allows those of us that grew up in this area to stay in this area and do what we love. So, thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to talk today about sort of two parts. The first part is just an overview of Omni Nano and our program, and the second part is more specific about our seed grant and the progress that we've made against it.
In case, you know, there's interest.
Feel free to ask any questions before or after. Do I need to move closer to the mic? Okay, there we go. Can you hear me now? All right. So, um, at Omnano, we think that one of the biggest unmet needs in, uh, solid tumors is the ability of drugs to access and maintain effective concentrations in the solid tumor. Um, this is especially uh clear in pancreatic cancer where um, the overall um, effectiveness as drugs has not been very good. It's not necessarily because we don't have effective drugs but more because they underperform in this setting. So that means that um the median overall survival for advanced pancreatic cancer remains at about a year. Um and the fundamental issue is that the dense tumor structure limits drug and immune access and drives this treatment failure.
So this is because about 85% of the tumor is made up of bulk that is a dense stroma or like a fortress if you think about it that blocks drug penetration uh suppresses immune engagement and collapses the functional vasculature makes it difficult for blood flow to get to the tumors and that tumor structure limits chemotherapy imunotherapy targeted therapy they are all fall short in the inability to have uh adequate access in the tumors.
So, OMP00001 was developed to attack this problem and it does so by a dual approach. It's a u nano a nanoparticle a my a polymeric myel that encapsulates two drugs. They're complimentary drugs and it preferentially delivers them to solid tumors. Cycopamine is um creates tumor access by modulating the stroma and ploaxel actually kills cancer cells directly and these two work together in a coordinated fashion and by that coordination we're able to get high sustained concentrations of both drugs in the tumor. This effectively changes the physical and biological characteristics of those tumors and makes them go from in inaccessible to accessible to both drugs and the immune system.
>> Yes.
So it penetrates initially because it's very small and then it releases two drugs. One of which modulates the genetic prof the genetic pathway that causes the creation of the stroma. So it shuts down that and it shuts down the creation of new tumor cells and the other one attacks the other end where the tumor cells already exist are growing. So we're trying to hit it from both angles. And in addition, that access that it creates also allows infiltration of um uh immune cells. So CD8T cells and things so that the body itself can tackle the tumor as well. So we're kind of coming at it from two approaches within the drug and one approach from the body.
Um so this is in fact our differentiation, right? So if you think about effective pancreatic cancer drugs, they have to do two things. They have to have good access to the tumor itself to the cells the cancer cells within that tumor stroma and they have and they prefer you would prefer them to be selective for the tumor exposure so that you get less side effects right so one of the downsides of chemotherapy even when it works is that it's toxic and toxic things are not fun to have to take um so if you look across the the axes here the vertical axis is about access in the tumor and the horizontal axis is really about that preferential tumor versus systemic exposure. And you can see that most drugs on the market for pancreatic cancer fall short on at least one of those.
But OMP00001 was literally designed to tackle both. So both of those constraints at the same time. And so we get good tumor access and high tumor specific exposure which we believe is key to actually driving durable responses in pancreatic cancer.
Now, this is um we've tested this drug in multiple pre-clinical studies across four different model types. I'm showing here late stage tumors that were allowed to grow until they were palpable and large before the tumors were started and two different u commercial uh clinically relevant models. And you can see that by looking at the red lines here. This is a Kaplan Meyer curve. So, it shows the death rate of animals that are on this study. uh and you can see that the um survival is extended quite extensively in both of these studies and both for um OMP00001.
You can also see if you compare the purple line to the red line and the graph on the left that this is not true when you just administer the two drugs.
So it really is important that the architecture deliver both drugs simultaneously in the same exposure window in the tumor. And this is what drives that exposure plus um accumulation that we were talking about earlier.
This slide actually quantitates that uh preferential um exposure that we're talking about. You can see about 150fold higher tumor versus blood concentrations here for in a genetically engineered mouse model. And on the right is an orthotopic synenic model where we put our drug headto-head against arroane which is the best-in-class formulation for pletaxyl that's on the market today.
And you can see we see tfold higher tumor concentrations um of pletaxel for OM00001 versus a brain. So this means you get more in the tumor, less in the system and a better opportunity for a better therapeutic window.
Uhhuh. No problem.
Is that driven by the genes of the cancer or is that driven by kind of like the response to of the body to the cancer?
>> It's actually driven by both and there's a cross talk between cancer cells and what's called cancer associated fibroblast. Those cancer cells talk to the fiberblast which turns on the extracellular matrix and says no protect yourself. And it creates this really sorry dense sorry can't talk without my hands this really dense stroma that responds by protecting those cells and then what happens is that as it restricts the blood flow and it causes the hypoxia or the lack of oxygen in there eventually those cancer cells are like I got to get out of here or I'm going to die right and then they metastasize and spread so what we're trying to do is loosen that stroma but not ablate it. So there have been experiments where if you just annihilate the stroma, right, all those cancer cells are like we we're free, right?
They go everywhere and they create really aggressive metastatic disease. So what we're trying to do is modify it enough that things get in but not under not undermine that basement membrane if you will of collagen that keeps it contained.
>> Thank you.
>> Um importantly the 10x exposure that we drive in the tumor is not true across the other normal tissues. So you see 10x in the tumor concentration versus a braine here. But you can see that in the blood, the liver and the spleen, you have the same or lower concentrations that you see with a braine. So this again helps us think about that therapeutic index where we're getting more drug where we want it and less drug where we don't.
um these types of approaches or drug delivery, improving the delivery of drugs have been uh commercially viable in the past with some billion-dollar deals that have happened. And importantly, things like Onavide and Abraane are examples where just improving the ability of drugs to get where you want them to go has a commercial and clinical benefit um even without changing the underlying drug. In our case, we're doing more than that. So, we're not just delivering the drugs. We're delivering the drugs when they're synergistic in their actions which allows both the access and the exposure.
Uh we're starting with advanced pancreatic cancer due to unmet medical need and also because it's unfortunately the fastest way to get a pre a clinical outcome in this type of me mechanistic approach. Uh then we also have the ability because we're mutation agnostic.
So we have the ability to think about other dermalbound tumors or other indications where ploaxel is used because as I mentioned we get a much higher uptake in the tumors of ploaxel than the current best uh case and so if you think about just advanced pedac you're talking in the range of about a billion dollar market and if you think about all of these other indications even in just the segments that are most applicable to these drug combinations you end up in about a 8 to10 billion dollar market.
Um, one of the risks of oncology early development is often um, development complexity, right? So, it's not easy to develop drugs, it's difficult to uh, get them from the research through to IND and into the clinic. So, we built a team around people who have experience doing that hands-on. So, with experience uh, taking research assets through IND enabling all the way through the clinic and into um, the market. So that allows us with expertise in nanome medicine CMC leadership and development um and regulatory and uh experience with um oncology programs and IND successful IND successful clinical development and approvals we can run in parallel our CMC toxicology and clinical preparation.
All right. So now I want to switch unless there's any other questions on the overview. I'll switch to more specifics about the science that we've been doing with the money that CRT has granted us in the in our in our seed grant. Um I I did this sort of by stepwise by goals. So bear with me a little. I'll try not to to geek out too much on you.
>> Hey doc, before we continue, your medical advisor is from where?
>> UT Southwest.
>> Thank you.
>> So we have one at UT Southwest. We have a recent one that we've added that's actually at city of hope as well. He's not on the slides. So, um all right. So, goal number one for our grant is all about optimizing the dose and understanding the best dosing and uh some of the the um concentrations and and different aspects of our of our nanome medicine. We did this by looking at both dose level and dose um schedule.
I didn't put all of them on here because there were three dose levels and three different dosing schedules and so there was a lot of lines and I thought probably best not to try to show you all of them all at once. Um but what I am showing you is the minimally efficacious dose and um in this case in the screening the best dose that we saw and one intermediate and the intermediates on for reasons and I'll explain in a second. So what you see is that if you don't treat these mice um they live about 19 and a half days past inoculation. So remember or past not inoculation past treatment start.
Remember these tumors are quite large when we start. So they're not in good shape. Uh and if you dose them you can see a statistically significant survival at 2.5 m per kg dosed three times a week. So that's quite a bit lower than the five and 7.5 that we've done. And we were happy to see that shift. It's not as big a shift as we want to see but we were happy to see that we could find a lower dose level. That helps us when we think about our clinical dosing, right?
helps us know what that window is for efficacy. Uh and then we looked at five and 7.5 and then um and you can see that the five uh adds about 10 days to that or about uh 20 days to that and 2.5 added about 10 days to the survival. Um, now 7.5 is interesting on here, right?
We didn't expect to see less survival at a higher dose. And that made us actually step back a bit and start looking carefully at the drugs that that we were using. And we found that we had inadvertently carried a improcess impurity into our final product. Um, and that improcess impurity was confounding the data. So we went back a step, we found out, we figured out how to remove that impurity from the polymer step before you got to drug product, which much easier to do there. and to quantitate it there than it is in the final product. And then we redid this with a confirmatory study. So the confirmatory study is here where we looked at control plus standard of care which in this case we used gymtoine plus brackane um andp00001 at two dose levels five migs per kick per dose and five migs per kick per dose that then escalated to 7.5 migs per kick per dose.
Um you can also see on here in the blue line that we have a twice weekly dosing which also shifts the survival but is not as significant as the three times weekly.
Um we are we're happy to see that the you know five mix per cake per dose in the confirmation study shows the same shift in survival that's statistically significant and we're also really excited to see the um optimized dosing pattern that we looked at that actually significantly does. So you think five megs per kid gets you almost twice uh the survival and then the five megs per cake escalated to 7.5 got us almost three times the survival of the standard of care. So now we've established a minimally efficacious dose, a standard dose that we can use in combinations because the five mix per cake is a good strong dose that shows good efficacy and an optimized dosing um paradigm.
My clicker doesn't always want to work.
Maybe somebody want to click the slide. Thank you. No, other way. Oh yeah, that's right. You're right. You're good. Um, so gold 2 is about nongp toxicology systemic tox. We've done a screening study. Um, but we are currently doing this study. It was initiated in May.
Results are expected next month. And we're looking at four different dose levels at 5, 10, 15, and 20. This is acute to talk study. So you'll give them a bolus dose. Three days later, you'll look to see what kind of systemic impact you're having. Then this will be followed by a repeat dose study. Um just just for reference, the five mix per is about 2x the efficacious dose because you also scale from rats to to mice. And the 20 meg is about 10 times. So we're looking at a range of two to 10x of the efficacious dose.
studies the tumors were inside >> and in the previous studies the tumors were inside the the mouse or you had already take them out we're treating them when a >> no no they were live this is an orthotopic synenicate mouse bottle and that just means big fancy words for the mouse has an intact immune system you put the drug or the tumors inside the pancreas and let it grow and we let it grow until it was quite large and then we started the treatment There we go. I think that's the right one. Yeah, it seems to be working again.
Thank you. Um, so then just an overview about um, synthesis. Now, this is a place that we've had a little struggle.
We're happy to say that we finally made it through the struggle. Um, this is a schematic that shows kind of how our drug is made and all the components. We have two polymers, an anionic polymer that we nickname polymer 4 and a cation polymer. They're put together in a 50 to1 ratio with two drugs, cyclopamine and pakotaxyl, which spontaneously, if you do it right, in the right order with the right solvents, with the right stirring, you get a drug substance which looks a bit like this one. Um, where you have uh a myel that encapsulates both drugs. They're spherical and they're about 40 nmters plus 40 plus or - 10 nmters.
Um I'll tell you a bit more about each one of those steps, but this is sort of the overall um schematic. This is all about the polymers. This is where we had some difficulty in the beginning. Um this was these polymers were made in MD Anderson Cancer C Center's labs in the lab of our co of one of our co-founders.
Um we didn't really have difficulty doing so. We transferred to a CDMO and sometimes it worked really well and sometimes it didn't and it took a bit of work to try to figure out what was going on. There's it's a three-step synthesis to make the anti- polymer. The first step is all about the subunits for A and B. The second step is the conditions determine the number of subunits for C and then uh step number four caps the hydroxil with aic acid that allows you to do some interactions with CPA. Yes.
>> Was there any AI involved that would help you sort of the drug manufacturer, you know, decide how to put this in some ratio or something in this or is that just oldfashioned chemistry? It >> was oldfashioned chemistry. This was done five years ago, right? So, and then we've done some modifications on it and some optimizations on it, but the first publications were published in 2018. So, it was done back.
>> But since then, have you used AI to enhance this type of research?
>> We have uh we've not used AI on this one. Um, and the reason, this sounds bad, but the reason is because it's very straightforward chemistry. So, really it was about uh adhering to the specifics of the reaction carefully.
>> Yeah. Um now we may use AI when we're doing process improvements, right? So we're we're now doing a scale up with a CDMO and they will use AI to think about um they'll do AI for efficiencies, right? So we want to drive this to be as inexpensive as possible. So we'll use that for that efficiency design of experiment. We used to do design of experiments but now you can do them in AI and it does the design experiment for you. So good. Um uh so anyhow um what we've been able to do just recently well in the last five months or so is to go from 100 milligram scale to 100 gram scale with repetitive batches backtoback that are consecutive that have that give us the right subunits every time with the right purity that we want of every one of these polymers. So we're now sitting at a point where we can do our tech transfer to our CDMO and we can move forward. We have actually done a competitive process to bid out this work to another CDMO because um to be honest it was quite painful to get here and we'd like to make it a little less painful.
Still doesn't like me.
>> Are there CD MOS in Texas or do they have to >> CDMO is in Texas um and we've worked with them for about three years. The CDMO we chose is actually in New Jersey because um there are not currently there's one being built. There's not currently nanome medicine CDMOs that are specific to nanoparticles and we were looking for um that specificity because it turns out that the biology is driven by the specifics not surprisingly and those specifics you can get if you're familiar with how you mix and how you do things and that you do them in a particular way. But when you have a CDMO that does everything from small molecules to biologics to peptides to whatever they're not as familiar with sort of those points that are really important. So we've selected one that actually that's their business is um nanome medicine.
>> Thank you.
>> Um we have two active pharmaceutical ingredients. Potaxel which we can buy at API grade. We have an agreement with fight and biotech and we've been granted access to their active drug master file which just means we don't have to do all that work for the IND. We can just reference the work they've already done.
The second um active pharmaceutical ingredient is psychopamine. It's a natural product. This one stumped us for a little bit and fortunately we finally figured out the path. Um so you can buy this as a research grade material. It's it's um comes from a plant. Um so it gets extracted and and it's actually quite pure. It's just not GMP grade and so you can't put it in the clinic unless it's GMP grade. And initially we had a single conversation with a single CDMO here in Texas and their proposal was to do a total synthesis. I don't know how many of you guys might have chemistry in your background, but total syntheses are always dangerous and especially of natural products because there's about 50 steps and the plants do them really efficiently and chemistry on the bench does not. Um the other alternative was to do a crystallization and then you know recristallize this as a pure form and take it from that. We actually decided that we would set out competitive bids. We would do a request for proposals with some outline of what we needed and we did that. we got multiple bids back and actually there's a precedented pathway that's a bit simpler. So you can take a protected starting material that's part of the extraction and put it in the GMP um suite and do the deproctions and the purification in your GMC suite and get out GMP product that's applicable for early stage clinical development. So this simplifies our path a bit. We had two vendors who both came up with the same path independently and the cost went down by you know order of magnitude. So this is very helpful. Um also the timing was much shorter now because the pro pathway is very straightforward. So that made us very happy because complexity is not the greatest thing you want at this stage.
Um and then our critical to quality attributes or the specifications. We've done some work here. This was good old fashioned chemistry. What happens if you change these subunits? What happens if you change those subunits? Does it get this? Does it get that? And we've come up with optimized subunits that let us get as you can see across multiple batches very tight size dispers dispersity poly dispersity um drug loading drug release um and we're very happy to say that that's true in our hands and also in the hands of our collaborators. So um we're pretty excited about that.
And so then this is just a plan for GMP represented manufacturing. So right now, you know, the first step is done in round bottoms with stirring and addition, it's done in very carefully and in a certain way. And as you might imagine, as a person, when you're adding things, it's not very consistent sometimes, and you end up with uh some variation that you didn't necessarily want. So when you go to GMP, you can't do that. Um so we'll use a reactor or mixer um that has the ability to add and control that ad um and mechanically stir to allow that to happen. Those three steps, those first three steps are controlled additions and steps of different uh and the order of which they're added and which ones are added and how is part of the special sauce that allows allows us to make the drug.
Yes.
>> Sorry. Do you think robotics in the future will help perfect that kind of a a process?
>> Yeah, this one is actually probably will be driven by robotics because the the mixers will be automatic. So, and then there'll be some pecan type things that add things at a certain rate at a certain time when you want them to. So it'll all be automated in that way. Um the nice thing is it's a single reaction, right? So you and then what comes out of that then what we do now is um dialysis and centrifugation and and rot rotary evaporator and all that stuff. We won't do all that. We'll put it on a tangential flow filtration to do all of those things in one step.
>> It's amazing.
>> Um and then go floor is all about JLP talks which we have planned. We've done competitive bidding. We've gotten multiple bids from multiple places and selected the one we think is the lead and negotiated payment terms and schedules and we'll start this up later this year once we have the the product in the larger scale. Um that scale up that GMP scale up tech transfer started at the beginning of the year and is well on its way. So our analytical just been um completed and we're now ordering equipment to make sure that we can do that TFF and those types of things.
Um and then the last one for goal five is a preINDD meeting with the FDA which we have we will do this summer. Um we had an initial target engagement for regulatory advice on Cedar products or an interact feedback earlier in 2024 which was quite nice. Um but there was some um changes to the strategy based on that feedback which included um that psychopamine needed more um characterization than the team had initially thought um which was fine and that the we knew the polymers we weren't sure if the polymers would be considered part of the novel drug but the FDA actually considers them novel exent which for us is good novel exients are easier to develop than than being part of the API. So um we have a proposed toxicology plan. They said it appeared sufficient. They recommended adding a couple arms. We did um and they the best biggest win probably was that we can quantify total plasma CPA and PTX in the nonclinical studies. And that's important because it's really hard bioanalytically to quantify free drug encapsulated drug and protein bound drug individually. But in this case we don't have to do that. We license the cells.
We do total total um uh drug content which is much easier to develop. For our preINDD meeting, we will talk to them about our proposed CP uh GPM plan for um um for cyclopamy to make sure that they're good with it. Like I said, there's precedence, but it's always nice to tell them what you're doing and get some feedback. um our duration and dosing plan for toxicities to ensure that it's sufficient for not just the dose escalation but the dose expansion that we have planned and get some feedback on the actual dose escalation protocol from them doesn't want to work and then it works twice story of my life. All right, so the last thing that um isn't really part of the um deliverables but is important to us is a capital raise. We're working on a seed round at the moment to cover the rest of the IND enabling studies that's not covered from the seed funds and we have a national cancer institute uh grant as well. Um so I just wanted to talk a little bit about that funding progress. Um we're constantly doing non-diluted funding. So we've submitted applications to the DoD to the NIH for um academic industry partnerships for CDMRP impact grants. We just in May we have submitted a a national cancer institute TTNCI grant which is all about translating nanotechnology in cancer. Um we are part of a consortium with Indie Anderson that goes in on Friday. So that's been a little crazy this week. Um I had a grant due on Monday which was the uh RO1 and then on Friday which was the ARPAH. Uh and then we'll we'll try for the lighty hill philanthropy. So Ligh Hill has done a great job of freely supporting um the Texasbased companies and one of their um prizes actually is applicable to our situation. So we will we will ask and then the capital raise um I'm sure you're aware that the market's not been a very pleasant place to be in for the last couple years. It does seem to be getting better. There's some liquidity coming back into the market which I'm very happy about. Some M&A going on and some money going back into the coffers that'll that should help free up some of this. Um along those lines, we did a lot of investor outreach, but we weren't getting a lot of traction. So, we engaged um Avalanche Capital. Um now, we were careful who we engaged because there are a lot of people that say they will help you and they take money and then they do nothing. These guys actually provide an AI enhanced targeted outreach. So, they take what you're doing, they take what you're looking for and then they use AI to find the right matches in the market for what you have for impact investors, for high netw worth individuals, for angels, and for institutional investors.
and they've been really really good. And now we're taking two to three meetings a week with investors and we've had several in our data room and gotten very positive feedback back on our due diligence deck. So I'm feeling a lot more um a lot more at ease that there actually might be a light at the end of this tunnel um on our race. And so we're getting really good feedback and quite a lot of um follow-ups and interest. So stay tuned. Hopefully this space will be very exciting in the next few months.
>> Yeah.
>> And I just a timeline in case you want to see it.
um which puts us in IND in 2027 and starting our first inhuman in 207.
Are there any other questions? Um happy to answer them. Yes, >> Leslie. Excellent presentation.
>> Yes.
>> Um you start off by saying if you um uh alter the tumor micro environment uh there could be increased metastasis.
>> It has been shown. Yes. And on your survival curves, um, you didn't show whether there was increased metastases with your therapy. And I realize you must have done that.
>> I did.
>> So, uh, could could you talk about that a little bit?
>> Yes. So, we used a genetically engineered modify engineered mouse model because that's one of the best models to predict metastasis, right? So like um an orthotopic models when you inject the tumors into the pancreas and allow them to grow they don't metastasize the same way that they do when they're spontaneous. So we used the genetically engineered mouse model. We actually um looked at it in earlier so that you can see the impact you might have on that spread. And we um we see a statistically significant reduction in metastases across the boards. And we did that study we looked at that at it's a survival study. So we looked at it at necropsy and so at necropsy these animals have been off drug for quite a long time because you treat them for a while and then you let them go and even off drug for quite a long time in a genetically induced model that creates tumors as on as a daily basis right we still see statistically significantly lower in fact most animals only had lesions in the pancreas where gyms arroane in the controls had four five quite a number of spread so I can share that data if you'd like. Um it is part of our our story. It's just it wasn't in the things today. So the the and so we took that a next step further because we were we thought we should see that but we wanted to know why. So we did a hisystologology study where we looked at advanced tumors and then we took half the animals and didn't treat them and half the animals and treated them for two weeks and then we looked at histologically at the phenotypes of the tissue. And what we see is in the animals that aren't treated, we see a huge proportion of um poorly differentiated and moderately differentiated tumor uh types, those go on to become metastasized because they're quite aggressive. But in the treated animals, we have almost exclusively benign pancreatic tissue. So a reduction in that moderately differentiated and poorly differentiated of like 80 to 90% in in hand head comparison. So that actually explains that drive of lower metastases because you're lowering the types the phenotypic cell types of the cancers that create the metastasis.
>> So so the reverse question is did you take animals who had established say lung metastasis?
>> We did not we have not done that >> and and treat and treat them and look for response.
>> We have not done that. So what we can say is that we can delay or prevent metastases, but I can't tell you what happens when we treat animals that have metastasiz.
Any other questions for Dr. Sloan?
>> Thank you very much. We appreciate your presentation.
Miss Doyle will provide the chief executive officer's report.
Good morning members. Uh I want to thank you again and thank staff for an excellent work session slash retreat that we had yesterday. I really appreciate all of the time um and patience and uh really good feedback um that you had provided yesterday for us.
I think that very much helps in terms of driving us forward on all fronts. Um but it was exciting to hear in terms of the artificial intelligence and prevention strategies. So, um, thank you. And that was, uh, quite a lot of work for our staff behind the scenes. Also, uh, which I guess is really my theme for, um, this very brief update. Uh, you know, we have been extremely busy. Uh, I was thinking about our last oversight committee meeting when we left early to go to El Paso with D, who was a wonderful host for a great kind of kickoff of our Texas tour. Um, and you'll hear more uh from Dr. Reus about that Texas tour and what we've been doing and our plans um upcoming for more visits. Um, and then I uh extend the invitation to all oversight committee members. Uh, you're welcome to join us on these trips.
They're great. We get to go talk with the grantees, hear from them. um you know they'll they oftentimes have been organizing uh kind of mini research or prevention conferences for us um and we get to hear about their excitement and enthusiasm for what they're doing. So it really is the best part of the job and and kind of to that point you know that we always provide you with um updates about the the prevent the presentations or meetings that we'll be attending. So you are always welcome also to attend those. Um you know so the Texas tour has been the fun part. Uh the kind of um internal work uh that we have been investing uh over these past several months that hopefully will pay off. Uh one of them will be the grant management platform. Um and you'll hear from uh Soma about that later. Um, also, gosh, all of the work that's been going into the innovations conference that will be coming up in October, Heidi will give you an update on that. Uh, we're really looking forward to that, but as you can imagine, there's a lot of work right now. Um, doing all of the party planning and, you know, lining up all of the speakers and everything. Uh, we're also doing a lot of work um in terms of the efficiency audit. Uh, we've been working with the state auditor's office. um you know they are conscientious and uh you know very good to work with but it is a lot of requests and documents and explanations um and you know I'm confident that we will have uh you know uh good results in terms of what we'll learn from this um but it has been another job on top of our jobs that we have kind of the same thing with the grant management platform. You know, all of us are and especially our staff are doing everything that we have to do to accept the applications, review the applications, process through the financial status reports, on and on and on. In addition to that, hundreds of hours of work is going into, you know, and and I keep saying this and it's true, literal blood, sweat, and tears, 17 years of experience is going into creating this new grant management platform that I think will really be excellent not only for our grantees, but also for our staff, but it is quite a lot of work right now. So, you'll hear all about that. Um, I'll u I'll cut it.
So the preview uh believe it or not we are starting now uh getting ready for the 2027 legislative session. Uh later on an agenda we will have the legislative appropriations request. Uh I also had in my CEO report that we are working on the strategic plan that gets submitted to um state leadership uh early next month. I think June 1st. Um, so that is, you know, it seems like we just finished the legislative session, but it is starting again. Um, and it'll be it'll be a great session, great year.
2027 will be our 20th year since um since the vote. So, there'll be a lot to talk about and a lot to report in terms of Texas's return on investment um when it created Secret. Uh the last thing that I will say um before we move on to the rest of our agenda is I just want to recognize some of the new staff that we have brought on. So I'll I'll ask them to stand or wave. So we have Jasmine Giles who is our new program manager for product development.
We also have Jacob Parker who has been with Secret for um some time now as a contract employee, but now he has joined Secret as a as a full Secret employee as one of our security analysts working with Soma.
So hopefully they both waved. I didn't see them. Um I also want to note uh some um uh title changes that I have made um since the last meeting. So both Dr. Miriam Casillas uh and Carlton Allen are now senior program managers. Dr. Casillas is for uh uh academic research as you know. Carlton uh is now senior manager for prevention. both of those recognize their experience and the additional responsibilities that they have taken on. Um in addition Dr. Ruckus I have now made not only you know because I have a pension for really long titles. Uh so she is now our chief prevention and communications officer and so she has really jumped in um and uh taken you know control of the strategic communications that we're doing that is so important especially as we're looking to this next legislative session. So you will hear from her uh on her first communications update to you.
So that those are all my updates right now. Oh, I didn't say, although you guys have this in your packet, uh, with the $105 million that you are scheduled to approve. If you approve that amount, we will have $23.6 million remaining for grant awards in August. So, still a substantial amount of awards that will happen in August, but um, yeah, great work everyone. So, any questions?
Any questions for Mr. Doyle?
Thank you very much and welcome to the new staff members and thank you to the current staff members who have um diligently added to all their workload.
We really appreciate your work. Thank you.
Okay, the chair recognizes Mr. Burgess to present the chief compliance officer's report.
Good morning, Riverside Committee members. Uh, our report is behind tab four in your books and uh, I'm a giver and I want to give Stephen the opportunity to present the update today.
Uh, before I do that, I also wanted to introduce a key member of our compliance team, uh, Rashonda Thomas. if you could stand up.
All right. There. She she's amazing as all our uh team is, but she is a a critical part of our leadership team in the compliance department. So, I wanted to give her a shout out. She's our lead compliance specialist. You'll be seeing more of her. I told her she could be up here one day and enjoy all the fun. So, I will pass this over to Stephen and then we'll answer any questions that you have.
>> Thank you committee members and thank you Vince for being such a great giver.
Um we we always appreciate your giving.
Um so as Kristen mentioned, it's been a very active quarter for uh the compliance team. So I just wanted to highlight a few of the areas um that I'd like to make mention that's mentioned in our report. Um so as of May 1st, we had six entities that had not filed four academic uh research reports and six product development reports. again well below our threshold of delinquent reports. Um also the compliance team reviewed 627 second level review um for this past quarter which again large amounts of FSRs being submitted with only 6% of those requiring any additional rework which is a phenomenal statistic.
Um, for our desk and on-site reviews, we performed eight enhanced desk reviews for this past quarter along with 13 on-site reviews. So, very active on site. So, our team's been all over Texas uh for this past quarter. Um, following up with our match uh expenditure reviews. So for this quarter we performed 12 of those annual match expenditure reviews. Um for this period uh for the FY2026 we've reviewed over 37.5 million worth of match review expenses. Um so that that total amount is what we've reviewed for any duplicate expenditures. Then we uh take a subset of that and then we actually sample it uh based on last year's performance. Um and we've done that further sampling for a little over 15 a.5 million of that overall 37 million. Um and great news, we've only identified a little over $33,000 uh in unallowable expenses. So phenomenal job. Um and then those ones that were highlighted for uh unallowable expenses were uh matching expenses claimed before the grant and then just some ineligible expenses that we found.
Um lastly for our training um again very active. We've not only completed our first of a series of our annual compliance trainings where we have a training for each one of our program areas, but we also completed six new grantee trainings. So, we're starting to bring on more of those new grantees.
They're getting um all of their um their contracts lined out and approved and then we start bringing them on and we uh do those new grantee trainings for them.
And we also follow up with those new grantee trainings um with an additional technical assistance uh training when they're getting ready to submit their first financial status report as well just to really kind of solidify um the expectation and what we need for those uh financial status reports. And then lastly, we also completed a new uh ASO training for one of our product development grantees. And as part of one of our on-site reviews, we also did some technical assistance training while we were in um uh UT El Pasa. And that concludes uh our updates. Glad to answer any questions you may have.
>> Are there any questions for Mr. Burgess or Mr. Nance? Yes, Mr. McGovery. How is the new grant management program going to affect what you all do?
Uh the the new platform will uh fully integrate all the things that you know we have several different spreadsheets that we use outside of the system. We actually have a a tracking and a workflow for all of our reporting internally that we send out to, you know, for our desk reviews and on-site reviews. We have a workflow in SharePoint. So all the the idea and plan is to integrate everything that we do.
Uh instead of these many disparate systems, it'll be one one system for us.
So >> does that reduce the number of people you need or just make their jobs easier?
I think uh it will make our jobs easier and and more uh cohesive in terms of so for right right now like a a grant accountant would do their first level review and then they email us and they upload it to you know documents to SharePoint then we go into SharePoint and we email them back kind of like we were in 2000. So it it uh this will be very the the workflow will be streamlined in that respect. So this be more efficient I believe. Yeah. I >> I don't know if this is possible, but does this mean that we could love compliance even more?
>> I don't know if that's possible, Mr. Montgomery, but we could try. I think if you wore your I love compliance pen, I should think that would be a good idea.
But >> Mr. Margot, >> I think you all ought to be moved up given the dyn dynamism of your report to the first agenda item before the CEO report. Oh, I I'll we'll ask Miss Dole about that.
>> And is it a requirement that all your staffers be left-handed?
>> Uh yes, it is actually.
>> I'm glad.
>> Any other questions? Um yes, Dr. Rosenfeld. It is this system the replacement for the git system.
>> Yes. I mean yes.
>> And so I I imagine these systems would like git are used many different locations.
>> Say what was the question on that?
Sorry. So say say like the jet um grant uh system must be used by more uh entities other than secret.
I'll let people who are more knowledgeable in that area answer that question but my understanding is a lot of uh the system we use was built for us but I I don't know if that's accurate or not. Heidi partially a little bit she can answer that. Well, well, kind of where I'm going is with all the work that's been put put on this to invent a new grant reporting system and maintenance system, have have you invented a commercial product?
>> I I have no idea uh about that answer.
So, again, we'll leave it to the people who uh that's their their wheelhouse.
>> Dr. Rice, >> I'm going to just ask the obvious and my theme is AI this week. So, um, are you as the as we think about the design of the new system, are you all participating in the design so that you might imagine that LLMs could be reviewing some things that are now manually done, you'd make our teams more efficient? Not that you need less people, but you'd ask enable them to drive more deeply into the questions that are the are the maybe the the things that would need to be looked at.
>> Yes, absolutely. It's a great question.
Um even just a couple days ago we had a meeting with uh Deote uh and Sman and team about uh compliance processes and how we can streamline on those and again I think AI is going to be a vital integral part of the new GMP. Yes.
>> Any other questions?
>> Okay. Turning to the certification of the award slates that we will consider today. Mr. Burgess provided the written report certifying that the proposed awards and review process complied with secrets statute and administrative rules. Are there any questions for Mr. Burgess?
Thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> And thank you to the compliance team for all your hard work.
The chair recognizes Dr. Oh, I'm sorry.
The chair recognizes the CEO, Miss Doyle.
Well, I was coming up just for the next agenda item. And uh so while uh uh Dr. Heert is coming up, I'll also address uh the question um Natasha Rosenfeld had in terms of creating a commercial project.
I I'll say this, we have been working with DIIR um and the work that we have done to customize the GMP system um will certainly be beneficial I think to other Texas state agencies potentially. You know, I'm thinking particularly of DERIT that follow the same processes that we do or similar processes. Now I think and you certainly have heard uh I think we have an excellent compliance and accounting program um you know review of the contracts the progress reports everything like that but but all of that was created as requirements through secret um so somebody who has a similar you know similar requirements like that could license that from DIIR um you know I I say this just among friends I'll say we are giving a great great gift to deeprit uh with the 17 years of secret experience in terms of you know best practices for creating review processes and they'll you know if they choose to avail themselves of that will have a tremendous benefit um that you know we have invested hundreds of hours helping to create but I think that's all good for Texas.
Dr. Ice.
>> Thought I had it on. Sorry. Given this is a public meeting, want to be extremely clear that an LLM that we might use in some way in the grant management system would obviously be a an encapsulated one-way in only non-public secure private, you know, system and nothing that relates to the the public LLMs that we know of now at least as as you use as a commercial individual user.
>> Yes. And and um and Mr. Mini will be uh will be part of the agenda to talk about the grant management platform. So ask him also. But I'll say this, we have been working very closely with DIR. This is one of the benefits of working with DIR which is the department of information resources. It's essentially this you know state IT department. We've been very lucky working with them. And so of course they also will make sure that we're following all of the requirements in terms of security um and confidentiality for AI. But that is one of the reasons that helped push us to make the decision to work on the grant management platform was to achieve a lot of efficiencies that we were not and also to be able to benefit from an AI overlay you know on many ways that will help us you know it does not replace humans um but it will help us in terms of having especially that first pass through you know you've heard us talk so many times about especially the financial status reports and the massive volume of documents that come through that and require review um and and so AI will help with that review um identify kind of the lowhanging fruit but it will always be the the human review that will be assisted by that.
Any other questions for Miss Doyle?
Thank you very much. Now the chair recognizes Dr. Heert to introduce the program integration committee's grant award recommendations.
He will also provide the academic research program update.
>> Thank you.
Always difficult to follow the scintillating presentation of compliance. Um but uh we'll we'll try.
Uh I know you've already had this uh 123 page document that describes the proposed grants. I'm sure you've read it all very carefully, but I'm going to go through the the the grant portfolio a little bit um and and talk a little bit about it. I am going to try and keep my remarks um contained to some degree uh because we've got a lot to go over.
We're proposing $85 million worth of funding. This is this is one of the the more exciting days for for the academic research program because we we really get to fund a lot of terrific terrific science. Um so it's really exciting. Uh so the ne the first slide uh gives you a summary of the awards that that we're we're making today. Um really excited by uh all of these different awards. We have 58 awards. We actually had one withdrawal. So we initially had 80 $80 million. Now we're down to $78 million.
So we'll we'll have two extra million dollars for August. So we're that that'll be terrific. Um I just want to point out a couple of things here. We're we we did have to make a little bit of adjustment with the research training awards to fund all seven and I'll go through that. Um so I think that that's going to work out really well. Um and we're really excited by the rural oncology trials accelerator awards.
We're going to find fund five of those really across Texas. So very exciting and having wrapped up then this 26.2 funding cycle, we were then able to look back and realized that we had enough funds to reach back into 26.1 and fund uh six applications that we really wanted to fund, but we just didn't know that we had the money at the time. So these were deferred and wanted to bring those forward. And I just want to point out one of these that I think is very exciting. This is number five on this list. It's I protect where investigators at MD Anderson are actually injecting immune therapies into precancerous nodules. So not cancer.
This is a prevention strategy to allow patients to avoid disfiguring head and neck surgeries. Uh because uh these they've already had one surgery in most cases to remove a tumor and by injecting the tumor directly with the imunotherapy they're able to dissolve these tumors.
It's really spectacular but it moves imunotherapy into the prevention space.
And so this is going to have profound effects uh profound uh therapeutic benefits outside of Texas across the world. Uh it's really really exciting.
Um and it's just going to and and the patients are just so excited not to have to go undergo these disfiguring surgeries.
You know, a couple of years ago, doc, we funded secret funded similar this is the followim it was Absolutely. This is this is the follow trial that this is going to finish the the study. Yeah, absolutely.
That's that's impressive that you remember that.
>> Fantastic.
>> In terms of the priorities addressed, we're hitting all of them. And I just want to point out that we've we're hitting the childhood and adolescence cancers with 10 awards this cycle. So really, really fantastic.
All right, I want to go through then some of these awards that we're making.
Um, we've got six core facilities. Uh, these are really the underpinning of of the infrastructure of of some of the best things that we do. I just want to point out numbers three and four on this list. Uh, because you've all heard a lot about CrossBridge Bio and how what the great success that's was for our product development team. those two cores underpinned the discoveries that led to Crossbreads bio. So really fantastic uh and and it's it's really a testament to how well these core facilities work. In terms of the research training awards uh I this is where we've had to make some adjustments. We had enough funds budgeted for about three or four of these but there were seven that came in as recommended for funding and really outstanding. And so what we've done is we funded the the best of the best, the top three best scoring awards, fully funded those at the current funding level. So this isn't we did we couldn't increase them as we proposed last year.
We kept the funding level at $800,000 a year for five years. So $4 million th those will then go on and and now we want to break these this bolus of training awards up a little bit. We'd like some to come back in three years.
This saves us money this year and allows us to fund other things by cutting them down to three years. Same amount of money, $800,000, but for three years. I hate to make people re write grants again in three years. We don't love that. Uh but that allows these investigators come back in three years and then ask for another five-year extension at that point. And this just spreads things out for us and allows us to make a better little bit better utilization of money this year and means we don't have to plan for so many training awards next year.
Uh so I think that's a a great way and and by doing that we could fund seven of them this year. So that that's the funding strategy there. Now, I'm not going to go through all 26 uh high impact, high-risk um uh grant awards here, but u we have deferred three of these that were recommended for funding.
I'm anticipating we'll be able to pick these up in August. We hope, but we'll we'll see how how the funding goes. It all obviously depends on the number of recruitments and other things that we get. But but uh we have 26 uh high impact, high-risisk awards and really excited by the the science here. Now in terms of the childhood survivorship RFA that we had last year we have one uh application this these are multi-investigator awards very large awards really fantastic and outstanding uh award coming out of MD Anderson really hit this RFA perfectly and so we're recommending funding that at nearly $5 million a year for five years.
Now these are the rural oncology trial accelerator awards. These are infrastructure awards to stimulate clinical trials across Texas. And I just want to point out that this was a a real hit. Uh fantastic. We've got two awards that are are targeted into the valley.
We've got an award for Tyler. We've got West Texas.
The only part of this that was a little bit painful is we had an award that was approved at Leach, but the principal investigator left Texas Tech and so that one had to be withdrawn. So, but uh I think this is really exciting and uh we're we're excited to see how how this turns out. I think it's going to be really impactful.
Now, in terms of the actual uh personnel awards, this first one is is an exciting one because it is going in back into Lev. Uh Dr. Aaron Bar is the local principal investigator for all of the children's oncology group tiles in Wick and we've been able to retain her with this award. So this is really fantastic.
Now I want to go through the recruitment awards and I'm I'm not going to spend as much time as I'd like to but but I have to spend a little bit of time on the first one. This is an established investigator award for Andre Nuenvig and he is a triple academy a winner here. He is the in in the academy of science medicine and AAS. He's also a member of the European molecular biology organization and probably one of the top two or three investigators at the National Institutes of Health and MD Anderson is going to we hope will be able to recruit him. So this is just fantastic. this is this is exactly what we want to do with these um these established investigator awards. So this one is just super exciting. So we're fingers crossed that Dr. Nve will will join us. Now we have three rising stars as well. These are fantastic. I'll just point out uh that uh Jose Clemente, Dr. Clemente has uh is is sort of the epitome of this. He's got 130 uh publications as an associate professor.
91,000 citations. this really impressive uh just just spectacular. Now we have nine uh or or I guess eight now because we we did lose one uh first time faculty uh members and uh I'll just point out that we have two of these uh and and one is is here Dr. Pollin on the bottom and then Dr. Urani uh from University of Texas at Austin that are focused on childhood cancers. Well, this is really fantastic. We have to recruit faculty to work on childhood cancers if we really want to make a difference. And so, we're really excited by this, but there's just a number of these that are just spectacular investigators. So, we're we're really excited by this.
All right. Uh, do we need to pause here or should I go ahead and talk about the RFAS?
>> You can Sorry, Dr. You had a um a scientist moving from MD Anderson to MD Anderson.
>> Yes. So, so I I I should point that out.
We actually had three of our firsttime faculty members stay at their institutions, which is allowed for f first time faculty members. was a little unusual. Um, but I think it it it highlights um our success at training that we've we've really have had a big impact at training investigators at at these institutions that and and it it it highlights that they have national searches and they're finding the best person in the department next to them. And usually it is they're switching departments. Um, >> I'm glad you clarified that because it seems like we're just moving one person from one building to the next, right?
>> But there's more to it.
>> There is more to it. So, I'm glad you said and and it's um and it is and there's there's some fantastic investigators. Uh, one of them was was Dr. Griffin and he found that actually um vaccinating people with for COVID actually stimulated the effect of imunotherapies for cancer. And that's a a kind of a mind-blowing um observation, but it's what it's doing is it's priming your immune system. And it's a specific vaccin vaccination. It's the mRNA vaccine with a nanoparticle in a nanoparticle. So it's that combination and and it's not necessarily COVID. It could be influenza. It could be a different vaccination. So really is this priming of your immune system and then the immun imunotherapy has a bigger impact. So there's there's still a lot that we don't know about imunotherapies.
Uh we've only had them for about 10 or 15 years and we are still learning and uh and so that's really exciting >> at this point. Are there any other questions for Dr. Eert?
Okay, you can continue. Thank you.
>> All right. I want to go through the uh quickly go through our our RFAS for 20 27.1.
Uh recruitment is going to be a big part of what we do, of course, and um cycle one opens June 22nd, so that's just around the corner. So, we're we're excited to see how this moves forward.
Uh in terms of the cycle 2 RFAS for 27 for fiscal year 27, we're going to reinitiate our clinical investigator awards and our clinical trials networks awards. We hope this synergizes with our roto awards, our rural oncology trial awards u to put trialists into those sites and to established clinical trial networks. We think that this is there's going to be a lot of synergy there.
We're going to have core facility support awards and research training awards again. So we want to keep these coming. Uh these are very important for the infrastructure of our our of our state. And I think as you as you we heard yesterday, artificial intelligence, this would really fit well with core facilities and training. So I I think this could be really exciting.
We have a couple of our Texas Regional Excellence in Cancer Awards, our TRE awards that are up for renewal. So we want to reissue that award. Um and we want to continue uh recruitment and retention of clinical trials. We don't have enough clinical trials um in Texas.
So it's very important Now, we want to modify our high impact, high-risk awards and turn that into a what we're going to call our secret catalyst award. This is going to be a more general pilot. U the highrisk part of that pilot is always a little bit hard for investigators and for reviewers to thread. And we know that uh we've got a lot of investigators who could really u use an infusion of a of a pilot to their their really their established line. So not something that's new and innovative, but maybe it should still be quite innovative, of course, but but in within their their normal work. And so the the catalyst, I think, will be really good. Um, and this might even keep applications going or or programs going that um the NIH didn't fund uh just simply because the payline is so low at the NIH right now. The other uh as only uh other RFA we that I'm really excited about is the Texas regional training award. So these are going to be training awards. They're going to be a little bit smaller, but they're going to be focused at or trek institutions and and non-traditional, I would call them uh institutions, non NCI designated uh cancer centers. U one of the things about our Texas tour is we're recognizing that there are fantastic investigators and trans fantastic training programs across Texas and they're underfunded. Um, and this is a way that we can really fund various investigators and get that training and hopefully th those students and fellows will then stay in Texas. But we know a lot of them will leave because they're fantastic. But but we're really excited about by this. We think this is uh was going to have a lot of impact.
And as we look forward to 27.1 for the uh November meeting, we are actively involved in reviewing and and looking at these applications. We for our individual research awards. Last year we had 515.
This year we have 620.
Really exciting that we have so many applications. We knew this was going to be the case because the NIH pay lines are going down. Uh, so we're very popular this year, but as you as you can see, that would be $62 million just in individual research awards. We're only going to be able to initially fund probably 50 of these. So, the pay our payline is going down as the number of applications goes up, obviously. So, it's going to be hard. Um, but um perhaps we can squeeze out a little bit more. I'd love to get the payline to to be 10 percentile. Uh, but we'll we'll see what we can do. And with that, I'll stop and take any questions.
>> Any questions for Dr. Heert?
>> All right. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Mr. Burgess has certified compliance for the academic research award process. It is my understanding that Dr. Hernandez has reported a conflict of interest with the rural oncology trials accelerator award slate. Are there any other conflicts?
Members, you have the list of applications and grant amounts recommended by recommended by the PIC for the academic research grant awards.
We will approve the PIC's recommendations if twothirds of the oversight committee members present and voting agree.
There are 65 academic research grant recommendations that we will consider in two motions. First, we will vote on the slate that Dr. Hernandez has identified as a conflict of interest and he will recuse himself. We will vote on the remaining award slates together in a second motion.
If a member wants to consider one or more award recommendations separately from the vote on all the slates, please make a motion to do so. Now I will entertain a motion to approve the five recommendations for the rural oncology trials accelerator award mechanism. So there >> all in favor vote I >> I >> any opposed hearing approval from at least twothirds of the members present and able to vote the motion carries. I note for the record that Dr. Hernandez recused himself and did not vote on this slate.
I will entertain a motion to approve the PIC's remaining 60 recommendations for the following academic research grant award mechanisms. Core facility support awards, high impact high-risisk research awards, multi-investor research awards, recruitment or retention of clinical trialists award, research training awards for workforce development, individual investigator research awards, individual investigator research awards for clinical trials, recruitment of established investigators, recruitment of firsttime tenure track faculty faculty members, and recruitment of rising stars.
>> All in favor vote I >> I.
>> Any opposed?
Hearing approval from at least twothirds of the members present in voting. The motion carries.
I will entertain a motion delegating contract negotiation authority to the CEO and secret staff and to authorize the CEO to sign the contracts on behalf of SERT.
>> So move.
All in favor vote I.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
I will entertain a motion to approve the fiscal year 2027 request for applications that Dr. Eert presented today.
>> So move.
>> Second.
>> All in favor vote I. I.
>> Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Thank you very much.
>> Thank you all. Thank you.
>> The chair recognizes Dr. Reus to provide the prevention program and communications update.
>> Good morning. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present. Now I have to follow the scintillating uh compliance presentation and a very exciting research presentation. Um but we're very glad to be here and to share about the prevention and communications. We'll do one update today and fortunately we had the opportunity in the work session yesterday to talk quite a bit about the success of the prevention program um over the last 17 years. It was very uh wonderful to discuss that and share more about the status of our program. So just a few updates today for you. Uh we are planning for our cycle 2. It will um it is planned to open in the new grants management platform which you'll hear more about um on September 1st, 2026.
And that will include the same RFAS that are currently open for the prevention program right now. Primary prevention of cancer, cancer screening, early detection, and the dissemination of secret funded cancer control interventions. Per our discussion yesterday, we're going to continue to look at those RFAS, look for opportunities um for the best possible ways to continue to support prevention within the state of Texas. So, if we have any recommendations or changes for those, we'll bring those back to you at the next meeting. Um but that is our current plan. And we are also seeing a rise in the number of applications that we're receiving in the RFA that is open right now. Um, which is a testament to the great work that SERT has done and the interest and the the rigor with which the programs that go through the SERT program um, which are funded go through. So, we're excited to see that and we look forward to reporting to you on uh, the continuation of that RFA as well to you. So, that's a brief update on our prevention program. Happy to uh, keep going.
I'll just keep going with our communications update now. So, this is my first opportunity to present to you as uh in my now dual role as chief prevention and communications officer.
Um, and as Chris Kristen mentioned, we had a wonderful uh Texas tour 2026. So, just a few pictures of that for you here with visits to El Paso, to Brian, to Galveastston, to a number of places in Houston, to Edinburg, um, as well. And so that really has an o been an opportunity for us just to hear and to listen from our grantees, from the communications, public affairs office within those institutions as well and understand how we can collectively be telling the story of success in Texas.
Again, I'm still pretty new, so it is it is not lost on me what an amazing thing Texas has done here to really create a cancer ecosystem that is like no no other. Um, in my seven months, I've had an opportunity to read through sort of what other states have been doing and just talk with people about what is happening and it is very clear that what has happened in Texas is a model um for other states, is a model for the country. And so just very proud to be part of this team and to have the opportunity to work with all of you and to work with the amazing institutions that Secrets uh as well as, you know, community based organizations and others to do more to tell the story um of Secret. As that moves forward, we started uh really ramping up our social media presence and the amazing communications team we already have has been leading that. Uh for example, in February, we had 13 LinkedIn posts and last month we had 31. Uh so if you're not already on LinkedIn, we ask you to, you know, to follow to share um to make sure that you're you're spreading the word. We're using that channel as well as other social media channels uh to continue to talk about Secret and we're looking at what other things work well.
Of course, you will receive an end activities memo from us and looking at what are the best channels for us to share the work uh particularly before the upcoming legislative session and just making sure we're getting the word out about the good work that is happening. So, welcome any any additional thoughts from Kristen or happy to uh share more about any of that.
>> Any questions? Yes, Mr. Taylor.
>> How do you handle the press? How do you get the word out to more than the people on the slides? Do you invite the press to programs?
>> That's a great great question. So uh so many of you know many of our programs have opportunities to share with press and so we do try and track that look at that be aware of those. Um we always send out a media advisory before these meetings for example to make sure that we are uh notifying people and and that that is going to the press and then we'll do similar we'll have a press release after this meeting um about the results of of this meeting and what we're able to support there. Um and I know the team has done that in other specific ways before too and I know Kristen was on uh the news last time and so we are always looking at that but welcome your thoughts on that and something that we'll continue to to work on as well.
>> Mr. M institutions also do their own PR tech did their PR UT did their PR they all they all kind of still do their own thing.
>> Absolutely. We also have in our contract that if they are putting out something that Secret has helped to fund, so a publication or if a company is announcing something that they uh credit Secret SERT also as part of their press release and share that with us. And so that is another way that we are promoting the message of what Secret's funding through our grantees.
Any additional questions?
Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.
>> Ruth, on communications, is there a way you could help Mr. McGomery in that area? Just as a thought, as an aside, you know, offline or Mr. Marggo's lack, we look forward to working with all of you's efforts.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you. I will entertain a motion to approve the fiscal year 2027 request for applications that Dr. Reus presented today.
All in favor vote I. Any opposed? Motion carries.
Moving on to agenda item 10. The chair recognizes Dr. Smith to introduce the program integration committee's grant award recommendations. He will also provide the product development program update.
Good morning.
So um this cycle is about 262 cycle.
That's our supplemental cycle. That's a cycle we implemented last time to actually give more money to companies that were doing well under original secret grant. And so this should have been kind of a simple process. We basically do the first slide if you would. uh basically had 10 companies apply. Um nine were ultimately reviewed. The the one company basically wasn't eligible.
They kind of jumped the gun in terms of timing. So we reviewed the nine. The process basically is they do about a 20page application. Um the reviewers, PDRC reviewers basically look at the applications. They look and and get uh questions. the questions are sent back to the companies and then there's about an hour interview because we, you know, we're familiar with these companies. So, it doesn't have to be as extensive it was in the past um when you're just getting original secret money. So, nine went through, they were ranked ordered and then something happened that is good news. Um CrossBridge was bought, Crossbridge Bio was bought by Eli Liy for $300 million. Well, Crossbridge Bio had two secret grants. one was a seed grant for 2.6 million and then they got a $15 million grant that um in November has voted on in in November and so Eli Liy basically bought them. They didn't need the secret grant anymore. They had drawn down about 2 and a half million.
They gave that back and now fortunately for us we can redeploy that money. And so we step back and I'm taking this a little bit out out of order just to kind of give you the overview of everything.
So now we had 15 million plus about 7.5 million that were left over from the 261 cycle. So what we were able to do is redeploy the money for whoever was next in the queue from the 261 cycle which affected this cycle because that company also had a grant for the supplemental cycle that would have been funded except for the fact that we're going to give them the bigger chunk of change and the rest of them then. So that's the reason it's a little out of order. This company would have been funded under the supplemental cycle. So if we can do the next slide please. So these are the four companies that uh were recommending for PIC recommended for 262 a awards. Um and you see the totals about 5.3 million. Um and I'll go through those kind of quickly what what they are. Um so we did that and then basically inappa will get their 261 award that was deferred. So kind of to summarize the nine companies here, four are recommended for funding, five are deferred because we still may have some more money that we can deploy before the end of this fiscal year when we meet next time in August. Um so we're looking that over at this point in time.
But for today, these are the four companies. Next slide, please. As you might imagine, they address the uh the um priorities simply because we funded them once before. So the assumption would be that they would would still fulfill them and and they do. So next slide. Um and these are the companies just kind of briefly right. So March Biosciences has a CARTT therapy. Uh they're going to use the supplemental funding for an eight patient uh hemopoatic stem cell transplantation cohort to evaluate its inclusion in MB 105's registration plan. Um next one, Zerion. Zerian has a mucosal adhesive uh emfosine formulation. They're going to be able to complete their phase one study uh at a cohort um and will support regulatory and and trial planning activities. Next one, Panther therapeutics. Uh PTM 101 is an implantable pacel um polyactic acid glycolic acid film uh that delivers chemotherapy directly to pancreatic tumor. Um and they'll be able to do a variety of things, not the least of which is to derisk trial execution in advance of program towards a phase two and three. And finally, we you saw them today. Um you know all about the technology.
Um Omnano is the third one and it'll it'll support uh funding for IND essential uh enabling activities um including additional GLP talks cohorts.
One of the things I wanted to say too about what I find interesting and I just thought I'd bring this up because everybody been pretty quick today um is that CMC is a really important part of um any product that gets onto the market and I just want you to know that our reviewers really concentrate on CMC. So a lot of times we think about the scientific aspect of almost all of these projects, right? But there are other aspects and you all well know when it comes to product development how important these aspects can be. The CMC is one of them. Certainly regulatory and uh clinical trial design and things along those lines. So I just I just wanted to point that out because a good portion of just trying to get to market um is actually being able to make the product. Next slide please. Al so so this is the next one. This is the deferred award recommendation and this goes to independum as you can see um they have they have a product basically um with natural killer cells generated from healthy donors in combination with AF um M28 and so this will be an award for 12.8 8 million uh based on like I said 261 so we don't lose that money because as you well know if we don't use it in the fiscal year goes to the end of time so this is great that we can redeploy it and what I found found interesting is I was very skeptical when we got you know a call from crossbridge um in the timing of this so we got a call from crossbridge probably we probably talked to them in March and they said that this deal would be done by April I told Chris I Yeah, that's not going to happen. Three weeks.
Took them three weeks and they actually executed on it. So that's great for us because if we had gotten clo very close to the end of, you know, August, it would have been very difficult to redeploy this money and would have been not utilized. So this is this is great that we can actually use this money to and I I have a feeling based on talking to Kristen today that we're going to have a few more of these kind of things, you know, sales or asset sales. And so that that should be interesting in the in the coming years. Next slide please.
Um this is 271. I think you're all familiar with our um different uh RFAS uh the therapeutics, diagnostics, new technologies and seeds. And as you can see from some of the the companies that we're doing supplementals with, right, we've kind of gotten out of necessarily we still get more therapeutic applications than almost anything, but we're starting to get delivery deliveries of different types of well-known drugs done in a different way, you know, and so I think that that that's interesting kind of the change that's happened that we can do different technologies now. And of course, we've had to expand our um base of um of expertise. AI being the I'll speak about that in a second because you have to say AI every half an hour or they don't allow you don't frequently. Yeah. Right.
>> So those are the four awards that we have. U still the same as they have been over the last four times. Next slide please.
>> Um and this just the timing of it. So the RFAS were posted. We only posted the RFAS for 10 days. And the next slide will show you 207. So that's about a 30% increase over last time which was 164. The money is a close to the same was like 1.1 billion last time. It's 1.241 now. Um and that probably is due to the number of seed companies, right? The seed companies are limited to three million. So right there you see but almost everybody's asking for three million, right? 3 million times 104 3 million. So that that was interesting the seed companies and then the the AI portion of it. I haven't been through all 207 but you know if you can tell from the titles and some some of the summaries stuff like that AI is a big component.
>> Is that number of seed apps much higher than it was before? I just can't recall.
Seems like that's a lot more than of the >> Yes, it is. And in fact >> good news because we're trying to form companies, right?
>> Yeah. And I want to send it to you. I had GDIT basically do a kind of a we've been doing this for about four years now. on this particular kind of way of preliminary applications and I have a b much more information in terms of the four years, how many seeds, how many starts. Um, and so I'll send that all to you once I it wasn't quite complete. I want to get it complete and then I'll send it to you next week or the week after. But yeah, that's the most seeds that I think we've had.
Next slide. Um, this just kind of shows you the geographic distribution. Um, I always think it's interesting that California and Massachusetts, if you can't get money there, you got to come to Texas. Um, so I find that kind of curious. Um, but the one thing I find most curious is the one international submission from Canada. And there's lots of reasons to think we do hear a little bit about people who are concerned about moving to the United States giving the immigration situations and things along those lines. That said, we spent a lot of time discussing, you know, secret with people from all over the world.
When I was at JP Morgan, I talked to a couple people, not people, but groups who represented a large number of companies from Australia.
The Japanese contingent, we just talked to them recently. Um, Belgians, almost every time I go to bio, we talked to people from Belgium. Uh, Wayne and went to Israel. So, it's not as though people aren't curious about it, but we don't really seem to see the numbers of of applications. And it's difficult, right?
It's hard enough to move from Wyoming here, let alone from someplace outside the United States establishing residencies and immigration status. So, I I find that a little bit interesting because we do have a lot of interest and yet no one seems to apply. Ken, >> yeah, I've got to say this is like the lowest number we have ever seen in terms of international applications. Um, and and Ken's right, we do we are invited to speak many times with delegations both that are visiting in Texas and also through webinars. So, I think kind of once everything kind of settles down, we'll see more international applications again. It's been, you know, we have a lot of success stories with our international companies. Um, you know, the one that I always like to talk about is Amatics. You know, they were a German company. Um, you know, if they are applying to Texas, they have to commit to having their US headquarters in Texas. Uh, so aatics came here with 12 people. Uh, then, you know, based in Houston. the project that Secret funded them for. The science ended up not playing out, but the Maddox had come here, liked it. They now have more than 200 people employed at their um at their company in Texas. They have a 100,000 square foot facility. They are providing services here in Texas. So, that is that's the story we want. Obviously, we want cures and treatments, but if you know, but we know science science will play out the way science will play out.
So, we want to build that Texas ecosystem also. So, international companies are a big part of that and and we'll keep working on it. Ken is going to go to Ken and Jasmine are going to Bio International. Yeah. So, >> and meet with the Belgians again.
>> They do have really good chocolate >> over a beer. Um, so this this is in Texas. Obviously, we most of our applications come from Texas and again it's it's still very similar to historical data where Houston area is the largest representation and followed by Dallas and Austin. Um, it just seems to continue to to expand that way. Um, but I'll have, like I said, I I I'll get the data together for the last four years and send it to you.
>> Um, Ken, how's uh, Panther Therapeutics doing with their study they're doing with the gel. How have you got any updates from them? What's that?
>> The panther therapeutics. Remember that gel with the right chemo? How is it doing? Have you got any feedback in terms yet? It's it's still progressing and stuff like that. Obviously, was just, you know, getting far enough along in their goals. Again, that's another kind of CMC issue, right? I mean, the the drug's well known. It's just basically a delivery system. So, Last one. That's it.
>> Any questions for Dr. Smith? Yes, Mr. Taylor.
>> Uh, in one of your slides for the different companies, you had Nano and the way I read the slide was that they were asking for supplemental money for FDA requirements or something. You know, they're they apparently had come back from FDA and they said, "You need to do this, this, and this." and they approach this to for supplemental money. How often does that occur that the supplemental money goes to some kind of change from the FDA?
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. I mean, the supplemental money can be used for a variety of different things, right? If they add a cohort, things things do change. We have se several companies, right, where their project has to change over time. And so, as long as they're making progress with their goals, then they they still are eligible for funding. We have to be a little bit flexible in terms of of what happens, right? When they get feedback, not only from the FDA, but get feedback from like doing manufacturing and things change. We've had companies too that have backup plans basically for they might have a lead molecule, but they have a secondary molecule in case they run into issues. So, all of those things are fundable.
>> Any additional questions?
I do have a question for clarification.
We're going to be approving four awards, correct?
>> It's four supplemental awards and one deferred company award. So, five.
>> Five total. Thank you.
>> Mr. Burgess has certified compliance for the product development research award process. It is my understanding that no oversight committee member reported a conflict of interest with any of the proposed awards.
Members, you have the list of applications and grant amounts recommended by the PIC for the product development research grant awards. We will approve the PIC's recommendation if twothirds of the oversight committee members present and voting agree. There are five product development research grant recommendations that we will consider together in one. If a member wants to consider one or more award recommendations separately from the vote on the slates, please make a motion to do so. Now, I will entertain a motion to approve the PIC's five recommendations for the following product development research grant mechanisms supplemental awards for product development research and Texas therapeutics company awards.
>> All in favor vote I.
>> I.
>> Any opposed? Hearing approval from at least twothirds of the members present in voting. The motion carries. I will entertain a motion delegating contract negotiation authority to the CEO and SERT staff and to authorize the CEO to sign the contracts on behalf of SERT. So move.
>> All in favor vote I.
Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Members, Miss Doyle notified the board on May 15th that she seeks authority to disperse grant funds in advance of to the five companies we have just approved for awards. Are there any questions for Miss Doyle regarding her requests?
>> Just a quick question just to clarify, would you advance grants potentially to the sub to the to the fifth that's not a supplemental but that's a deferred? Do I get this right? And maybe I'm just in the weeds.
>> Yeah. the it's for the five five companies they would receive >> including the one that's being deferred.
>> Yes. Well, the it the company was previously deferred now it's being approved for an award. We are removing it from the deferred list and you have approved it.
>> Yeah. And and I know that we we don't put all of this in the motion because the motions would become just too long.
But they are they only receive uh advanced funding once they've executed the contract, have the matching funds, and have fulfilled all of the requirements pursuant to the general appropriations act article 9 section 4.02A.
Do I have a motion to authorize secret to disperse grant funds via advanced payments upon execution of any contract documents related to the grants and the successful completion of tranches to the five companies approved for awards today?
All in favor vote I. Any opposed? Motion carries.
Moving on to agenda item 11. In our work session yesterday, Dr. Smith laid out several recommended updates to SER standard revenue sharing standards applicable to product development grants. Are there any questions for Dr. Smith regarding his recommendations?
Hearing none, I will entertain a motion approving the proposed changes to SER standard revenue sharing standards for new product development grants.
>> So moved.
>> All in favor vote I.
>> I.
>> Any opposed? Motion carries.
>> Thanks.
>> The chair recognizes Miss Doyle to present her appointments to the scientific research and prevention program committees.
Members, I have listed and provided the bios for the six people being um recommended for appointment to the scientific research and prevention program committees. Those are behind tab eight. Uh these have been presented to the board governance subcommittee. The board governance subcommittee recommends approval.
Are there any questions for Miss Doyle?
Is there a motion to approve the CEO's six appointments to the scientific and prevention program committees?
>> All in favor vote I. Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Turning to agenda item 13. I recognize Miss Doyle to present the presiding officer's new appointments to the geographic diversity advisory committee and the advisory committee on childhood cancers.
Members, you have the names and bios of the three people that I am well that uh the chair recommends uh to be appointed to the advisory committees to the geographic diversity advisory committee and to the advisory committee on childhood cancers.
Are there any questions?
Members, is there a motion to approve the three advisory committee appointments?
All in favor vote I. Any opposed?
Motion carries. Thank you. Dr. Eber, will you introduce Dr. Soen to present the university advisory committee report.
You all have Dr. Shannan's uh bio in your in your books and their tap 10. So, I don't want to spend any of time really going over that, but I do want to just thank Dr. Shan, most of the changes that we've implemented in the academic research program have have come through the university committee and and and and Dr. Shoen's had to deal with all of my desires to change and and to try and improve and and fund more people. And so I just really thank him for his leadership and I especially thank him for coming up today from Utrgv to present uh what the what the university advisory committee has been recommended.
So thank you.
So a very good morning to everyone and I'm really so glad to see all of you and I'm really thankful to all of you despite of a very busy schedule you came here and supporting separate. So thank you very much from separate team and on behalf of uh separate university advisory committee. So my name is Subas Shahan and I'm visiting this place from University of Texas Uran Valley and um so I'm a professor of cancer iminology and microbiology there in medical school and I'm also director of cancer center cancer center. So I'd just like to give some brief about what university committee is doing and what we have been doing over the year. So next slide please.
So in this university advisory committee we have representation from whole taxes and you can see we are covering almost every area including Grande Valley. So I'm really glad to see and this is our committee right here. Uh so we have Dr. Abby Abson she is a vice chair and Dr. Carlos Adiaga he's our past chair and uh Dr. Deborah Kle Dr. Peter Davies Dr. Gatlib and Dr. Joe Hardford uh Dr. Shik Mandian Clian noir David Soul and Dr. power ready. So uh all these members are very active in in their work and they are either university or institutional representative or senior administrative leaders or they have been separate funded scholar. So their profile is pretty high in in my opinion. The next slide please.
So we had uh three meetings so far last year and uh we discussed different recruitment awards and how we can do some budget allocation to need uh to address the need and we also discuss about uh 26.2 RFA mechanism. We discussed submission data for 26 26.1 RFAS on January 15 again we met in 2026 and we discussed about submission data for 2026 26.2 RFA mechanism and we discussed some potential of 27.1 RFA mechanism.
uh so we also discussed some of the potential changes what we can make uh to address the existing need as you know from NIH we we are not hearing very good news so how we can just scatter over cancer researcher in Texas in a better way uh so on April 23rd very recently we discussed some potential 27.2 and two RFA mechanism and uh we also discuss about role of artificial intelligence how we can use this in either submission and even reporting. So we provided several recommendation especially for um people who are writing grants and people who are reviewing grants because nowadays it is very easy to just say give a command to AI and just they can write the whole application for you. So we provided some recommendation. Let's see. Uh and I I hope these are good recommendation. So next slide please.
So here this is the data um for our for this cycle. So as you can see here our individual investigator research award which is very popular award and this time we had 332 submission and out of that we had 32 application out of it which is about 10% funding rate and in other IAS like in children's we had um 48 applications six funding so still 13% and IRA For clinical trial here we have a relatively high success rate and if you see here in systems biology we have 6% success rate here we had 53 applications and if you see here this is I was really surprised to see that IRA for early onset of cancer uh we had 20 12 application but uh none was funded so we need to look for why is that and maybe we'll discuss with Dr. hiber what what was the reason why none of the grant was funded in this mechanism and for uh prevention and early detection we had 39 application and three funding. So again in this prevention area I think um we need to work a little harder in order to find either good applications or uh we need to see why what is happening here.
So core facility support award uh it was completely renewable we got uh total nine application six were funded so and research training award this was I think very good uh out of eight seven were funded very high success rate multi-investigator award 10 and two were funded so overall if you see here total aggregate we got 675 applications and overall success rate was about 15% which is much higher than NIH right now >> is NIH >> NIH is on R1 I don't want to even say it's awful uh so up to 2 to 4% is sure but after that it's case by cases so that's that's a scenario for NIH so this is recruitment so we got um established investigator total 11 applications Seven were funded again pretty good success rate here in rising star it was very high very good success rate and these are really good mechanism through these mechanism we can attract cancer scientists from across the nation and we can attract them to Texas and they bring lot of wealth to uh to the cancer society here in the Texas um so here we just work out some of the more metrics like what is happening overall like whether our followup funds are how we are doing with that and how our publications so basically we just want to look for success metrics here and if you look for Ira we have funded about 581 total awards and total 543 million award was given and if you look for follow funds Then we have almost like break even here in this uh case a publication rate is quite high pretty good and there are 37 clinical trial and overall patient enrollment if you see it's 4,000. So if you look for every single uh category here so they are doing pretty good. Some of them are really very good in terms of follow funds which we look for definitely and number of publication and patents filed.
So uh total yes sir >> on on the publication column is that publication per total secret time or publication per year or two years? So this is uh total publications.
And when you look at publications um do you break it down by the quality of journals they were published in or how many citations they had? Uh yeah that's a very good question and I think u for doing that we again need to go into more deeper metrics. uh and sometime like when you are publishing paper so obviously majority of our separate scholar and these investigator they don't compromise with the quality so I will not say like they are publishing in a very low tier journals but usually it's a it's a very high publication quality uh coming from separate scholars thank you so if you see here in poor facility.
Poor facility we have total funded 96 uh awards and if you look here the overall return on investment is about 1.7 billion. So in my opinion this is a very successful mechanism as you can see here because our core facility mechanism it provide opportunity for for developing infrastructure. So I think we should keep continuing with that. This is really a very powerful mechanism.
High-risk highrisk high high impact high-risisk award. Again this is with very good success matrix it is showing up really good and there is a multi-investigator award which is a very unique award where like one investigator cannot do anything or when we just meet a group then they can create a wonder.
So that's the mechanism for multi-investigator work. Just one question on that on that slide Dr. Chan 22,000 clinical sorry patients enrolled is that an aggregate over time or is that >> yes it's aggregate over time >> okay how many years any idea >> so I think we are just calculating for all 17 years now >> I'm sorry 17 years since started >> and another question on that is those is that patients enrolled in Texas or patients enrolled total >> and that Yeah, right. Those are all Texas enrollies. Okay.
>> Yeah. Because all investigators are here in Texas, >> but it could be a multi-institutional study, >> right? But uh uh separate doesn't allow funds to follow in other other states uh as per the policy.
So here uh this is our track. I'm just coming back. So Track is a very recent award. We started maybe four five years before and total investment on this tech center of excellence is about 29 or 30 million and if you see here followup funds is already uh about 40 millions.
So very good mechanism and again uh it's you can see follow-off funds are pretty good already six patents are filed and 100 more than 108 publications are coming from this. So uh yes again this is a very powerful mechanism and I'll appreciate separate to put more money into this mechanism as you can see followup funds are pretty good uh track measure instrumentation this is I think we did one time again this is a very new new mechanism so basically all track are very new mechanism and as time goes by we will see more follow-up funds on in this side.
So this is uh recruitment.
So total we have recruited 71 scholars so far and as you can see number of publication from this is pretty good and patient enrollment side is pretty high in so all these recruitment awards for recruitment mechanism what we are doing I think they they are showing very good success and again we will we should be keep doing this.
So now I come because as I mentioned I come from Rio Grande Valley. So I just need to do some more you know advocacy for track mechanism.
So what what is the impact I just like to show some of the impact of uh separate track what has made in last four five I think we started this four years before. So this is very new mechanism and I just want to show what is happening here. So if you look here in Rio Grande Valley because uh I I live in Rio Grande Valley so I can just speak for it but I'm sure in every track region almost we have the same situation. So Rio Grande Valley we have about 1.5 to 2 million residents here and about 5,000 square miles and uh in addition to small and meteor towns we have about 1,200 colonials and colonials if you have not seen then you can see how they look like in the in the pictures and uh we have basically uh we're looking for some basic necessities including drinking water waste management system so overall quality of life is highly compromised in this region. So challenges for track region are different as compared to challenges in Houston and any other major uh cities and uh conducting research in that area is again it's again a challenging like uh we our residents are facing challenges. So look some more into granularity. So if you look for annual incidents we see about 6 to9 6 to9,000 cancer patients in Uandandy Valley and um incidence remains pretty high and if you look for uh incidence rate it seems lower here compared to any um any other part of the Texas but there could be a reason we are not even uh whether we are having a problem in cancer diagnosis So that's what I see because overall burden is pretty high in Rio Grandandy Valley.
If you look for cervical cancer screening rate in Rio Grande Valley is 40% as compared to 63 or 64% rest of the Texas. Similar problem we see in colctal cancer screening. The overall screening rate is relatively low as compared to rest of the Texas.
Uh if you look here um a clinical trial.
So clinical trial obviously all the infrastructure at least I can speak for my area we are just developing and one of the grant I see it was funded on rural clinical trial. So hopefully it will accelerate our uh processes but as of now our enrollment or representation of uh Hispanic population or in granted population is very very low and I was really surprised to see when I look for representation of uh Hispanic population in TCG database. This is a national database what we have where we have representation from different uh communities as you can see here like from a white uh population we have representation in database at 77%.
And we have 19% Hispanic population in the nation and our representation in uh this database is less than 3%.
So um if you look here again uh number wise like how many patients we have in this database. So Hispanic population uh representation is very very less. It's about 3.1%.
Reason because population is not being enrolled into the clinical trials. So more clinical trial we do in in that region maybe we'll have a better representation of our population in that database. So considering that uh at our center which is stack funded uh center we started a tumor RGB tumor genome project. So in that project we are going to just uh do genomic analysis on our Hispanic uh patients over there and we are very fortunate to have our partnership with DHR hospital and we are from where we are getting all the samples patient cancer tumor tissues and those are ready to do a genomic analysis.
So what it is going to do it is going to basically provide the mapping of genetic landscape of RGB cancer patients. So this is going to provide us what kind of whole genome if we do whole genome sequencing then we are going to able to find some of the variance genomic variants and some of the uh other things at a molecular level what is happening due to regional exposure or and then once we have that genomic data then we will be able to compare with national uh TCA TCG database So that we will that way we will be able to compare like if in cogian population this particular gene is high what is happening to our population here in Hispanic population. So all this is going to provide really very unique data and this won't will not happen without the support of separate.
So in order to uh genomic uh database we will be able all we will also be able to look for transcript transcrytoic analysis and epigenetic level what is happening. So all this is going to get uh we are going to get all this data through that tumor genome project of RGB. So as far as uh economic impact of secret investment in our grande valley we were very fortunate to have a $18.4 $4 million NIH award to to support our cancer center.
So uh what other impact separate mechanism is doing in our RGB communities? So we started a uh cervical cancer prevention action network. So that program is doing very well. So we are just going to Colonia. We are trying to train our people and we are also since we are in medical school and we have uh other health related schools as well. So we are trying to develop a uh develop a program through that we can just our student for different cancer prevention strategies and then they can just go to the community and uh they can just create a Wi-Fi effect I will say or you can say a donut effect. We are also training our high schoolers. We are trying to provide them exposure so that we can generate a next level pipeline for uh physicians and uh cancer scientists. Uh we do a a cancer conference every year in the in the region and uh this year we just conducted our fourth one. So now this conference is getting a national recognition with the help of all uh separate funding. We are now we established a a seminar series and through our seminar series we are able to get uh speakers from across the nation top-notch people from uh Texas and uh California and just name the place although people usually don't like to come there because of the travel hassles but still we have been very very fortunate to get really top-notch people to our place.
So these are some of the recommendation we provided to again for separate uh so keep investing money into port facilities as this is one of the most um popular mechanism and it has provided really very good you know funding and clinical trial focus RF we need to just work more in clinical trial especially in our track regions. So I also like to just uh give a recommendation to have a scholar recruitment RFAS for track eligible institution per se.
So that way because our challenges are different as compared to Amry Anderson and UT Southwestern. We cannot recruit those top-notch scientists in Rioani Valley. So we have to just go step by step so that we can at least get some people over there.
uh and RFA is uh really targeted for tech eligible institution a small idea development grant that we just again provided some feedback on that. So that will also be very very powerful.
So in summary uh I just again uh I cannot thank your support enough and uh on behalf of separate and all our university advisory committee we are so thankful to you and your valuable suggestions uh academic research committee through UAC express its uh really gratitude to SERID leadership and considering current NIH funding situation is really in a unique uh position to provide important opportunities uh to take really start priorities and recalibrate our existing program as well as new programs. So CRIT has leveraged remarkable acup accomplishment in 17 years and we hope to keep doing the same thing. So SERT funding is really changing the pace in cancer especially in low and mid-tier institution through track mechanism. So again uh we are really thankful to separate for uh and encouraging this track mechanism.
So thank you very much. That's all I have. And again uh last year I promised you you should visit u our place and again this time I'd like to invite you all uh to come to Rio Grande Valley and visit our place and see what we have done. Thank you.
>> Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Soen?
>> Cindy.
>> Oh yes, Mr. Taylor. Um, I should have asked this question as you were rolling through your slides and I apologize, but you had one column called award funding, which I'm assuming that's secret award funding and the next column is follow on funding.
Can I be correct in saying that's but for secrets funding the add-on funding wouldn't >> Yes. So follow up funding like when separate is funding and after that we are getting money either from NIO and from either from >> third parties.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. I mean in some of those cases more third parties was given money than our funding which is great.
>> Thank you.
>> Any additional questions?
Thank you so much for your presentation.
Thank you for traveling all the way from the Rio Grand Valley.
>> You're very welcome. Thank you very much.
>> One last item for consideration before moving to the next agenda topic. At yesterday's oversight committee retreat, we discussed some issues related to artificial intelligence and cancer. It was an informative discussion, but in my opinion just scratched the surface of this important topic to cancer research.
I propose that the oversight committee approve a new advisory committee for artificial intelligence. Members, is there a motion to approve the creation of the artificial intelligence advisory committee?
All in favor, vote I.
>> I.
>> Any opposed?
Motion carries.
Mr. Taylor.
Yes, I believe that's the the procedure.
Oh, his question. Would you >> uh yesterday the presenter said or somebody asked maybe it was Scott said uh can you give us some names to be on these committees and they all said sure but we need to follow up on that.
>> Thank you.
The chair now recognizes Mr. Ellis to discuss the proposed administrative rule changes.
>> Thank you, Madam Chair. This is the unfortunate situation for a lawyer where I can't say, "Hey, I don't make the rules." Um, so we're we're seeking the oversight committee's permission today to publish some proposed changes in the Texas register uh to section 703.23 of SERT's administrative rules, which addresses dispersement of grant funds.
Uh this amendment comes about because as we fielded some questions and worked through some guidance issues with uh existing grantees, we discovered that the language of the rule itself doesn't seem ambiguous on its face, but when you apply it to special circumstances, it can be. Uh namely uh the rule addresses that SERT will as a measure to make sure compliance of all grant closeout obligations uh occurs then we will hold back the last 10% of sep grant funds from grantees that receive advanced funding.
Historically it this has mostly come up in the case of the product development grant program. The vast majority of grantees do receive advanced funding.
But what those of us who don't work on the administration of the grants day-to-day didn't know is that sometimes that changes through the course of the grant. They might receive the first funding and advanced funding and then they might transition to reimbursement or as the program has gone on, we're finding more and more situations and some companies may not seek advanced funding. uh when we applied the text of the rule as it existed to those circumstances, it wasn't always clear to the grantees when we would need to hold back that funding. So, we're proposing to amend the rule to to just clarify our general practice that we will hold back that 10% in all product development grants and that if that mechanism is necessary in any of the other grant programs, then we can we will withhold that 10% if we provide notice uh to to the grantees.
It isn't really that much of a change in the way SERT does business. It isn't a change in the expectations of most grantees, but it will help grantees going forward to be able to know very clearly what they can expect with regard to those holdbacks. So, uh, if the oversight committee publish or approves publishing of the rule, we will publish that in the Texas register and we'll put it out there for public con comment by, uh, you know, the public or any stakeholders can comment on it and we'll be back to to talk with you in August based on any any changes we need to make based on that feedback or if there aren't any changes that we need to make to to to move to actually adopt the rule and make it part of our administrative code.
Are there any questions for Mr. Ellis?
>> Members, is there a motion to publish the proposed changes to Texas Administrative Code Chapter 703 in the Texas Register?
>> So move.
>> All in favor vote I.
>> I.
>> Any opposed? Motion carries.
Turning to agenda item 15. The chair recognizes Mr. Weaver to present the chief financial officers report.
>> Good morning, Oversight Committee members. Glad to be here with you this morning and appreciate the opportunity to present the CFO report. I am coming to you this morning with a little bit of a good news bad news situation. So I'll start with the bad. Um we've got a lot to cover financially. Um so you'll have to listen to my drone a little bit more than usual in aggregate. But the good news is I will try to limit my remarks because I know we've got quite a bit more to cover as well. But obviously if there's anything we need to drill down on more than I've done so feel free to interrupt me or follow up with any questions you have. Um, starting off with the budget, there's not a whole lot happening. Uh, as a reminder, this is the update as of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. So, that'd be the quarter ending February 28th. Um, as you might expect in our indirect administrative uh budget category, we've expended or obligated about half the money. That's a uh budget strategy that largely funds our indirect admin salaries. So again, as you might expect, about halfway through the year, we've uh reserved about half of that money in the direct administrative strategy where most of our major service contracts are and the grant management platform replacement money. We've obligated uh significantly higher portion of that money and again it's largely attributable to those big service contracts in the grant management system. Moving on to revenue.
Um we had a relatively good quarter of about $360,000 in total collections. As is uh you might expect the majority of that was attributable to um Wellereg. Uh continuing theme of my updates to you.
It was another um large increase over the same period for the prior year. So uh during the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, we received the royalty payment for the fourth quarter 2020 calendar year 2025.
Uh and that represented a 37% increase over the fourth quarter from 2024. And when you look further into the numbers, it echoes kind what we've been talking about in the last few updates that they're continuing to uh introduce the drug in new markets and even those markets where it has been sold for one or two periods. We're seeing those nent markets mature and seeing a lot more royalties generated there. Um in the fourth quarter for the first time there were sales in Eastern Europe and Estonia, Croatia. Um some of those naent markets that are maturing are uh Japan which had a full four four-fold increase from the prior quarter um and Singapore which showed a 10-fold increase from the prior quarter. So good news there. And then the home market, the US where the majority of our royalties are generated continues to see growth as well. So it was another positive update on our royalties. um inception to date, the agency's collected just over $12 million. Um but in terms of trends, roughly 60% of that money has been collected just in about the last four years or so. So the arrow is moving in a positive direction.
Moving on to our performance measures.
Again, echoing conversations we've had before. Um, our number of pre numbers served in prevention services measure had a great quarter. Um, even though we're updating you on the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, the program has already um achieved 74% of their target goal for the entire year. And that's in light of that goal increasing from 750,000 to 775,000 people served from 2025 to 2026. Um and so as a reminder uh two meetings ago I think a question had come up in terms of what our high water mark was uh and that was before COVID and we've slowly been ramping up in the years since CO 2025 was the best year on record for the number served in prevention services and we're trending in 2026 to exceed that as well. So good news there. We had no company relocations thus far, but again, it's only the second quarter. We're only at halftime of the ball game. So maybe unlike a Vanderbilt football game, I'm looking forward to continuing to play in the second half and hopefully seeing seeing some numbers come in there.
>> I know. Wow.
>> And uh finally moving on to the bonds.
Uh we had our second trunch issuance in early December of about 72.6 6 million.
We're on track for a total issuance in 2026 of about $298 million.
And so that concludes my CFO report, but happy to answer any questions y'all might have.
>> Are there any questions, comments?
>> If Margot asks about Vanderbilt football, I'm leaving.
Okay. Um, please continue to agenda item 16. Mr. Weaver will explain the fiscical year 2027 bonds issuance resolution.
>> Yes. So, moving on to the materials behind tab 12 in your book. I'm, as mentioned, presenting the 2027 bond resolution. For those of y'all that have been around for a while, there are no material changes from prior years. It's just a request to officially submit the request for financing to TPFA uh later this summer. As you might recall, last year we made one substantive change to the resolution, and that was to provide explicit uh authority for our deputy CEO and chief operating officer to act in the absence of our CEO. So, we've carried that provision forward into this year's draft resolution. Um, we are requesting authorization to issue up to $300 million in bonds in 2027. of that amount, we'd anticipate issu actually utilizing about $298.7 million based on our forecasted expenditures of grant awards from 2022 to present and then our what will be our current administrative expenses next year in fiscal year 2027.
Um, as you proceed through your packet, just um, you'll see on page 122 to 123 the resolution itself. On 124 and 125 is a detailed program description for reference. 20 uh, the 2027 expenditure schedule is there on 126. And then finally, there's a full issuance history from the agency's inception uh, presented for you there on 127. And that shows again how we've issued the full 3.6 billion to date that we have issued over time.
Um so with that the next steps would be to request the motion to approve that.
We'll take that to TPFA and we'll work with the bond review board from there and then hopefully be all set on September 1st to get moving in 2027.
>> Mr. Margo, >> has the state given you any any indications on what to expect on the interest rates?
>> I have uh we have not received to make sure I understand your question.
Is it what is the interest prevailing interest rate of our bond? Typically the underwriters will pass along a transcript to TPFA and they will share that with us whenever they issue um commercial paper or bonds. They did not do that in December, but we have another issuance coming up early next month and I'll make sure to follow up with them to get that. U typically prevailing rates for short-term commercial paper have been about 4.25% 25% everything going on in the world right now kind of odd but perhaps it's the flight to quality those rates have ticked down a little bit um so I can follow up with you for something more precise but that's what we >> I was just curious as to what if they made any projection given this environment we're dealing with so that just it was curiosity >> Dr. Hernandez, >> what was the rating the last time we issued that? What was what interest did you get?
>> It was about 4.25, but I can give you that exact number.
>> I would I'm surprised because um we have a great credit rating. I mean, we have we can pay a bill and I've seen counties and cities issue that bonds and they're getting what you're getting and you're you're much stronger. they are probably issuing taxexempt debt and our debt is issued on a taxable basis usually for compliance purposes or other reasons.
Sometimes they'll >> even though it's costlier the costs of compliance are less when it's taxable debt and so that's probably >> a primary differential you're seeing.
>> Okay.
>> Any additional questions.
Is there a motion to approve the fiscal year 2027 bond issuance resolution requesting financing for $300 million in bond proceeds by the Texas Public Finance Authority in fiscal year 2027?
>> So move.
>> All in favor vote I.
>> I.
>> Any opposed? Motion carries.
Moving on to the next agenda item. Mr. Weaver, please explain Secret's legislative appropriations request for the 2028 2029 bianium.
>> Sure. So again, for members that have been with us for a while, uh, every two years, we present or excuse me, we present to you our draft legislative appropriations request. And because of the cadence of the bianial bud budget cycle and our cadence of oversight committee meetings, we have our May meeting and then our August meeting. And usually the detailed instructions from the legislature and the governor as far as preparing that budget request don't come until that intervening period between this meeting and the one we'll have later this summer. And so uh what you're looking at is our draft L. Um on April 30th we submitted our base budget reconciliation to the legislative budget board and the governor's office. It's currently under review. Hopefully, we'll see that approved anytime, any day now.
And once that happens, we'll get the instructions shortly thereafter and be able to fully develop our budget requests. And at that point, typically, we would schedule a special audit subcommittee meeting later in the summer to provide you all or those members um that opportunity for the detailed review of our draft L. But um as you will see the draft budget for 2829 looks fairly similar to what you're used to seeing. We've got a overall funding source of about $300 million primarily. Almost all of it is bond funding with a little bit of license plate revenue um product development application review fees, conference uh revenues, etc. also mixed in there. But um that budget should provide program funding for academic research, prevention, product development roughly the same as it has been for 26 and 27, albeit with u we plan on asking for two exceptional budget items that are detailed in your meeting materials. And uh those would be to adjust the authorized salary levels of our two exempt positions and then also to increase our full-time equivalent allowance uh from the current 54 FTEES that we have now to 56 and 28 and 29.
One of those would help bolster our cyber security, information security capabilities and the other would provide accounting operational support the agency.
Um, so I'll leave it there but again happy to get into the details further if any of youall have questions.
>> Any questions?
Do I have a motion to approve SEO's legislative appropriations request for the 2028 2029 bianium? So >> move second.
>> All in favor vote I. Any opposed? Motion carries.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> The chair recognizes Deputy Executive and Chief Operating Officer Heidi McConnell to present the proposed contract extension with General Dynamics Information Technology Inc.
Good morning oversight committee members. Um so my uh memo is behind tab 14. Um and this is an extension with for our GDIT contract. Um the original contract contemplated the initial contract which was um an uh issued in fiscal year 2022 with four contract extensions. because of the development work on the new grant management platform that the state will own. Um that we uh are um proposing to extend the contract with GDIT to continue uh use of their GMP for part of the year in FY2027 and um also continue the um administrative support that they provide to all of our grant programs. Um, as explained in the memo, uh, the total amount of that extension is $6.3 million. Um, about $900,000 with of that is a subscription for the, uh, GDIT grant management platform. That is a partial year. Uh, the current subscription for this full fiscal year is uh, 1.5 million. Um it also includes that amount includes the payment of honoraria to all of the uh peer reviewers uh peerreview panels uh for prevention and for academic research uh because GDIT will continue to support that in uh cycle 27.1 which the RFAS are out right now and we're receiving applications and all of those meetings will occur in the fall.
Um the one thing I want to point out is when we have our new grant management platform, we will take over um issuing all of those payments for honoraria. So right now those are direct costs through the contract and then there's a little bit of administrative uplift um for the DDIT um staff that work on that. Um but we will be doing that. So that's actually one of the reasons for the additional um uh FTE and accounting because we will be processing a whole lot of honoraria payments. Now some of that um kind of the uh approval of all of that will be um automated within the new grant management platform but we still have to make make sure the payments are made. Um currently we only make direct payments uh by our staff to the review council members. So all of the chairs of the review panels um going back to your question uh Dr. Rosenfeld about the GMP.
So um that we currently use with GDIT and I'm going to step back in time because this goes back to um the early days of of SERT and getting SERT off the ground. So going back to actually the spring summer of 2009. So this is fiscal year 2009.
At that point, SERIT existed, but it did not have an appropriation of the bond funds. We were operating on the predecessor agencies, the Texas Cancer Council's um general revenue funds that they had. Um in fact, in the 2009 session, we actually had a supplemental appropriation of some additional general revenue so that we could actually issue the contract. the initial contract with SRRA International, which was the original predecessor company um prior to DDIT that we contracted with and we contracted with them in June of 2009. We issued our first RFAS I think in August of 2009. Um we made our very very first award but it was a recruitment award that didn't actually go through the the platform at that time um in November 2009 and then we made the first cycle of academic research awards in March of 2009. So that was a very quick time frame to go to from uh contract and and meanwhile staff were getting hired.
Kristen and I were some of the first staff to get hired. I was hired in the beginning of June 2009. She was hired in July 2009. Our chief scientific officer, Al Gilman, was hired mid June of 2009.
He put together all of the um you know uh peerreview members, the research council um that was in existence then um and you know came up with all of the RFAS in that very short time frame. Um, so when we contracted with SRRA at that time, they had they had the application receipt system and they had the peerreview system. Um, and those were contracted they had a lot of um uh u contracts with federal agencies that made grant awards. In particular, one um that was kind of similar was the um congressionally directed medical research program that's funded through DoD. And at the time, I mean, they fund many different diseases, but they do fund cancer. In 2009, I think CDMRP was actually um awarding like $16 million um in total. So, um we were the first really big program to to use their platforms, I will say. And then we built the postawward grant management platform. We started building it in the fall of 2011.
um when we started actually having grants uh awards and those grants needed to be run through the system so and managed that um it it was a a very interesting time period but that's a little bit of background in the history of how we got >> cheaper contract >> how we got to having the the um the contract that we have now with GDIT and the the grant management platform that we have and it is three disperate systems. So, you know, there's application receipt, there's um, as I said, the peerreview system, and then the post award. And we even had to build what we call the bridge because the grant applications that came in through the application receipt, they didn't really sit anywhere. So, we had to create a bridge where we could have those uh, applications reside. So we could, you know, have all of the information related to that, have all of the peerreer statements and everything related to all the grants that went through review and then that would connect to our postawward grant management platform that we're using now. So that's in a nutshell what we use.
I will add this. So you know you guys have experienced SERT for many many years and so you know we are a very small lean agency and truly always operated if one smart person is on a big item then the next smart person needs to find something else. We don't have enough staff to you know double and triple up. So I thank my lucky stars that I was hired in July. You heard Heidi say the grant management contract was signed in June. So Heidi has been the point person on the grant management contract for decades, more than a decade. And and I think if it would have been me, if that I don't know that I'd still be a secret. So uh you know that is a testament to how many how much work it is. Um, you know, you heard her say in a nutshell, I mean, this is a whole planet in terms of the work that has gone into creating not only this grant management platform, but now the transition, and you'll hear about more about that from Soma, but I I do want to say that Mr. Taylor >> Heidi when we implement our new system in January I guess it is hopefully >> what's going to happen to the general dynamic permission contract >> uh so we are going >> to go away >> well we will it will change I mean even writing the requirements um the scope of work for this transition for this extension uh took a lot of work because we are juggling um releases actually and someone will go more into this but this summer of the application receipt for 27.2 two cycle, which means, you know, that part of the application receipt comes offline from our use of the GDIT program this summer. We will not use it anymore. Um, well, actually, I take that back except for recruitment grants through their cycle 27.3.
Um, but that's a more limited subset of the, you know, applications that we receive. Um, and we will still need the support, some of the staff support that, uh, GDIT currently provides. Um, and that's really more on, um, kind of the administrative review of all the applications that come in. Um, we will try to use AI there, but we still need humans to make sure that those AI reviews are done correctly. Um and as well as all of the support for the peerreview panels because uh GDIT staff takes on assigning um the applications to panel members and you know making sure the conflict of interest is you know filled out and uh or if they're filled out then you know they have to reassign potentially reassign or move um applications. So they do all of that to help support what our small staff um in in um academic research prevention and product development have to do. Um they also support all of the peerreview meetings.
So they, you know, um they they manage all of those meetings for us, which is actually helpful because it does, um, you know, put a buffer between our staff and the reviewers in terms of, you know, um, addressing and making sure that we aren't influencing um, you know, the reviewers decisions and recommendations to us. Um, so yes, we will continue to have those services.
who that will be I you I mean GIT will certainly I'm sure bid but there may be other potential companies out there that have offer similar services.
>> Do do you have >> Mr. McDonald >> do you have any idea how much money we'll save with the implementation of the new grant management program?
>> Um all I can say is it it won't be 6.3 million. I I don't I I really um I mean I it will be a diff >> it's okay. I'm just curious if you do if you don't there are certain things even now that GDIT has to do manually to make all of the application receipt and peerreview reports and everything work. That that won't have to happen with our new GMP. Um, so it's kind of hard to say what is like actually taken away until we receive bids, >> but it but it will certainly save us money.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah.
>> Heidi.
>> Yeah.
>> I I probably have this wrong, so correct me, but was the primary impetus to move from uh Jet to an internal system? What was that based on security requirements or money saving requirements?
>> Um, it was based on basically we was that based on money saving because for us to enhance the system every time we needed to make a change, no matter how small, GDIT actually had to program it for us. So we have a whole we have meetings every other week where we go through like what do we need what are were the requirements they have to write out the requirements we have to agree to them then they have to develop it in the system then we have to do user acceptance testing that was it was very very expensive that was I would say like obviously the 6.3 million doesn't contain that even the 8 uh whatever 2 8.2 2 million that we have in contract right now under didn't really include enhancements per se um because we stopped them. But um it it was very expensive to do that and and very time consuming and even with that we didn't have all the automation that we really wanted to. So this will truly automate many things and even give a lot of transparency to some of the processes that we have for both our internal staff and for the grantees. Um they don't even have the grantees do not have any reporting capabilities within the current grant management platform. So that wasn't built into that platform for them. So they can't they can look at the their grants individually but they can't really pull out full reports.
Any additional questions?
Is there a motion to approve the contract extension with General Dynamics Information Technology Inc. for one year in an amount not to exceed $6,37,163?
>> Second. All in favor vote I. Any opposed? Motion carries.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you, Miss McConnell.
The chair recognizes Chief Information Security and data officer, Mr. S. Meni, to provide an update on SER's grant management platform modernization project.
We can't wait.
>> Glad to hear it.
Good morning. So before I give my update, I would like to answer a few other questions. Um, you asked about uh commercialization.
Whatever we build in Texas by a Texas state agency is owned by the state of Texas. SER doesn't directly own it. And so what we've done in the building of the grant management platform, we've actually pulled in assets from other agencies that share the same platform, which actually saves Crant money. And so when Deeprit comes online, they can share the same assets that we have at no cost. They would have to pay the license fee and the cost to bring it online. um whatever that is with DIR. Um so it actually saves money in a huge way because again the state cannot be double charged for something that it already owns. So commercial no owned by the state yes. Um so going to AI it is a closed loop. Um, one of the things that we looked at in the whole efficiency is to ensure that we identify working directly with the teams to identify where AI can integrate into the process.
it will not make decisions but it will at a degree of confidence make recommendations and so in that loop the benefit that we see is that cbrate owns the data and as as such we're able to train AI over and over again refining so that we can get it to a higher degree of confidence um we've shown the team what it can do there are various opportunities we continue to meet with the teams internally and with DI are to understand what the capabilities are, what the refinements are. So there is a lot going into this and I definitely are confident that by the time we go into release 2, which I will explain at a later time, release two should have a version of AI that we can pull into production. Um, as far as cost savings, again going back to the efficiency, we should see a lot of the cost that we offload to a third party be brought inhouse. And again, that's going to be over time as we identify those opportunities with the compliance team, the grant team, the programs team. There should be a huge improvement in that.
All right, starting with my update. Um so we are we planned to go live in December of 2026.
However, we identified that um 27.2 will go live or the um 27.2 RFA will be released or announced sometime around August. And so if the applications um are brought online in the old system in September, we may have a data migration issue because those applications are in flight. And so we did a little bit of planning with the department of information resources DIIR and the deoid team and we identified that it's best for us to preserve the integrity of the data if we collected the applications in the new system and as such we broke down the release. We're calling it release one and release two. Release one brings the application intake online early where we can announce the 27.2 to begin collecting applications and we don't tamper with the data which preserves the integrity but we can continue 27.1 in the current system and once that application is done and awarded we can move the data back into the new GMP our target for release to like I said is December 2026 early January 2027 with the goal that the current system with GDIT goes offline January 31 1 2027. So we do have a hard date on that. Um the the the big goal here for us is to understand what cred has wished we had in the current system and implement that in the new system. So it is very collaborative.
Kristen mentioned hundreds of hours. I would say it's more than that significantly more than that. and and and the the entire team is very collaborative on what they want. It's an opportunity that we align the wish list.
We prioritize. We work with the DI team to figure out what exactly is it that we want. Now, there are some items that we've identified that we may not be able to achieve this go round, but we're planning ahead, right? We're planning ahead after go live. Some of the nuances that we may want to see, we're identifying those as well. Um so the the the collaboration with DIIR makes it very efficient and easier to work with. Um a lot of the changes that are on the table today like Heidi said goes back to this whole planning and working with a third party. The goal is to bring that in house where the team or the program teams are and empower the program teams to be able to make those changes themselves within their programs without having to consult a third party. And also the big thing about it, the biggest win in this is our data would be in one place where we can create reports specific to the OC members, create reports internally, create reports for the peer reviewers and to the grantees.
So we're looking at this as a one true system where all our data is housed and we can run as many reports integrated to any other system that you know we want to report out to but not as a dependency for our grant process. And so again, we continue to work on that with minor tweaks um working with the Ruth and team um and getting a communication plan out um what the communication strategy is because we have to communicate to the grantees that there is a change coming and what the plan is and also training.
We're coming up with training materials um recorded webinars um so job aids things that we can post on the site um to help them to navigate the system. Um, we understand that change sometimes will be hard, but um, we're we're doing our very best to make it easy on our grantees and so there's a lot of changes to come um, with this, but all for the best. Happy to answer any questions. Um, this may be maybe for Kristen, I'm not sure. But assuming that the grantees have some problems, then it follows that their reports may be delayed because they're confused about the system, they can't figure out this, they can't figure out that, but it's Christmas, whatever.
Do we can wave their their compliance?
Correct.
Yes, we have many kind of >> Vince is saying no.
>> What Vince stood up and shook his head.
No.
>> Um, we have we have uh, you know, I will use the non-legal term, but we have kind of uh, back doors built into our requirements that allow us to recognize situations. Um, I'm sorry.
>> Have flexibility.
>> Flexibility, right? That's the legal term that we use, right John?
>> Hopefully, it won't be necessary, right?
You know, you know, we will do a lot of planning and and so much of this is to make a much more intuitive system both for us and for the grantees.
So, it'll be a new system. Nobody likes change, but hopefully that change will be better.
>> Is there any flexibility on OC member complaints?
you you all are explaining this to all the grantees is forthcoming because I've never been to a data systems change that wasn't a nightmare.
>> Absolutely. We have >> Thank you for that.
>> Things have changed but but everyone in my own former firm it was always more complicated and more problems than were ever assessed. But we explained that to the to the grantees and everybody understands we're going to be going through this change. So, you know, grab your ankles.
>> We definitely put that in our communication plan. I I will say as part of user acceptance testing, we will be opening up to some of our or we will offer the grantees to be part of the testing with the goal to get the feedback from them. Now, I hope that we get a lot of responses, but we will definitely be making that offer.
>> Dr. Rosfeld, >> how long do you think it will take to recoup your development costs by savings from GD GDIT?
I would have to get back to you on that one.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but that's worth us looking into.
>> Thank you, >> Mr. Taylor.
>> You did get input from your our grantees and setting up your your program. So, you know what they're thinking already, but you mentioned earlier in when the roll out of the new system comes up, you mentioned a licensing fee would be paid.
Whom does that license fee? So the underlying platform is um Salesforce and Salesforce the it's licensed to the institution that is using the platform. So think yes. So if say Deepridge were to use Salesforce, they would need to buy their own license and um that is to allow them to use the platform but the coding and the processes and everything else behind that which is what we're doing now is owned by Texas. Okay.
>> That's a third party.
>> Yes. But it's through a DI contract that third party like everybody else.
>> Oh yes. Yes.
>> Nothing new to them.
>> Oh, nothing new to us. Um so I will say the team we're working with right now um built the grant management platform for from for HHS and public utilities commission on the same platform. So there's a lot of state agencies also using that platform including DIR.
>> Any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you.
>> Moving on to agenda item 20. The chair recognizes Miss McConnell to give an update on the 2026 secret conflence.
Um, so member, do you have my uh memo and update behind tab 15? Um, and I'm pleased to report that since I wrote this memo last week uh with 60 registration, a little bit more than 60 registrations as of this morning, we have 87 registrations. So, we are climbing. Um, and I attribute that to um our communications team uh releasing some uh listerve messages and um uh social media messages last week uh reminding people to register for the conference um especially in uh light of the uh uh registration fee increase u midjune um that occurs June 13th. So I think that drove um registrations and hopefully will drive more. Um we do have uh two conference sponsors secured uh to date. HDI clinical which is a company based in Houston. Um and Exact Sciences um we also have five exhibitors um American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network the Greater Houston Partnership H2 Ocean Sino Biological US and Southwest Research Institute. So we are um if you know of any companies who want to um sponsor or exhibit at the conference please let them know that information is available on the uh conference website so they can find it very easily. Um this all the program staff um are busily um securing speakers. I we have most of our conference schedule um fleshed out at this point and we're um confirming those speakers um and we will be releasing the full agenda in June um that's the plan too in mid June um as far as abstract submissions um the portal opened on April 13th um and it will close July 24th. We will accept um up to 400 uh abstracts um for the poster sessions that will occur. We have two poster sessions in the conference um this time as we have had in the past. Um so I know those are popular events for all of our grantees.
Um we will be having the Texans Conquer Cancer Awards dinner on uh Monday, October 5th and um the uh representatives of our advisory committees um have reviewed those um nomination submissions um and there's actually a meeting tomorrow or I think next week um of the of the group um to kind of synthesize the recommendations um that will come forward to Kristen and um uh Miss Barbario Payne um for uh finalization.
Um so we anticipate having making four awards to our grantees um at that dinner. Um are there any questions?
>> Thank you very much.
The chair recognizes Mr. Graves from Weaver and Tidwell to present the internal audit auditor report.
>> Good morning.
I have a brief update for you uh with the status of our internal audit plan.
Uh we had three audits uh as you see on page 161 of your materials. We have three audits this year. Uh the one that is the most recent that you will see today is the critical asset inventory and vulnerability assessment uh part of our information security objectives. And so uh that one is the the prime candidate for discussion today, but that will be discussed with you in close session because of the information security implications of it. Um and so we'll cover that more uh in close session. We are currently underway with our intellectual property compliance uh which is part of our postawward grant monitoring segment. So this is really focusing on uh that intellectual property and the revenue associated with that that should be coming back to secret. So this is a new area. We've covered this very lightly in years past.
Um but now there's so much more intellectual property that has been developed over the years. Uh so this is is fairly new for everyone and we're working through that one currently. Uh we've previously reported to you the SEO efficiency audit results. The other thing that we have going on right now is the follow-ups over the three internal audits that we have from last year. So that is our post award grant monitoring audit from last year. We're also performing some light follow-ups over our advisory from last year, which was over the PECARD rebate program, and then uh follow-ups over non-grant expenditures, and those are also underway. So, we anticipate having those wrapped up uh in the next few weeks, probably by mid June, uh the intellectual property will probably be closer to the end of June. Uh but we'll have everything ready for you, including a draft of our annual report at our next OC meeting. So the internal audit plans moving along uh very very rapidly and we are on pace to finish before the end of the fiscal year. Uh we'll also have for you at the next OC meeting the proposed plan for fiscal 2027.
That's all I have for this session for you. If there's any questions >> Mr. Montgomery what is the overlap between the efficiency audits and the audits that you all do?
>> Which efficiency audit? The state's efficiency audits.
>> State efficiency. Sorry.
there is some brief overlap in those. Uh that state efficiency audit is has a very specific focus under section 327.
Uh so we do look for efficiency in our processes and there's been a lot uh that we were able to leverage from our his historical perspective when we did our preassessment. Uh so things like the uh post-awward grant monitoring last year had a very high focus on efficiency. So the recommendations that we're following up on are all are primarily efficiency related. Uh the same with our non-grant expenditures. There are some things with compliance and accuracy, but since we've gone through those in the past, you know, in the past 10 years, we've already covered a lot of the compliance and accuracy pieces. So we're able to now be looking at a lot of efficiency.
So a lot of what we've done here in the recent two, three years has had a lot of efficiency recommendations built into it. So that's that's the overlap. They they have some other um focuses that they're they're looking at uh according to the the statute. Um but as far as the individual processes and how SER executes its work, um we we've been able to do that and that's really where they're focused now is things like space usage, which we really haven't covered before. Um usage of IT personnel. uh some some of those we have covered at least in in bits and pieces over the last years as we've conducted our audits. So that kind of gives you a little bit of a picture of how they overlap. They're they're not specifically directly related, but they do have some some correlation.
>> Has it has your work saved time? I guess maybe for Kristen I don't know. Has your work saved time in the efficiency audits? different way of saying what's the overlap.
H >> has our work been able to save uh >> time in the agencies has it been able to save time by the staff in responding to the state efficiency audit?
>> From my understanding, of course, I'm not directly involved in in those, but from my understanding, the the SAO's audit is is pretty deep. Um, so there there may be that might be a better question for for uh Miss Doyle to answer rather than me, but it's okay. I've kind of figured out the answer.
>> I think there were overall prepared to answer some questions. I think there's some questions that have been asked and some documents that have been asked for that we did not ask for. So there there has been some some time spent on those.
Any other questions?
Thank you, Mr. Graves.
The oversight committee will not take up standing agenda items 23 and 24.
Looping back to agenda items 8, 10, 21, 22, and 25. We will move into close session. For the members of the public watching this meeting, other than the vote that the board will take regarding the internal audit report, I do not expect to act on other matters after returning from close session and before adjourning the meeting. We move into a close session pursuant to Texas government code 551.076 to discuss the internal audit program report over critical asset inventory and vulnerability assessment security objectives. The oversight committee will also take up agenda items 8, 10, 22, and 25 while in close session to seek advice from council pursuant to Texas Open Meetings Act 551.071.
I ask Miss Doyle, Mr. Amedi, Miss Cusack, Mr. Jacob Parker, Mr. Burgess, Mr. Nance, Mr. Ellis, and Dr. Smith to join the oversight committee in the closed session.
The time is now 11:31.
Are we recording?
>> Okay. The board now reconvenes in open session. The time is 12:40 p.m.
I will note that Miss McConnell was also asked to join the oversight committee in the closed session.
Closing out our work for this meeting.
Members, is there a motion to approve the internal audit program report over critical asset inventory and vulnerability assessment security objectives?
>> Second. All in favor vote I.
>> I.
>> Any opposed? Motion carries.
Turning to agenda item 26. Se will hold the next oversight committee meeting on August 19th. If there is no further business and there is no objection, the chair moves to adjourn this meeting. Is there a second? Second.
>> All in favor? I.
>> Motion carries. This meeting stands adjourned at 12:40m.
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