Talk IBC
Talk IBC
Dr. Naoto Ueno of the University of Hawaii
Dr. Naoto discusses the challenges related to cancer health disparities and ongoing research into inflammatory breast cancer. The conversation covered funding uncertainties, including potential budget cuts and the changing landscape of biomedical research funding, as well as the importance of storytelling and community engagement in advocating for research. The discussion also touched on the potential of artificial intelligence in medical processes and the critical role of mixed funding sources in advancing academic research.
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Terry Arnold: Hello. This is Terry Arnold of the Ibc network talk Ibc podcast and I'm very excited to have with me today Dr. Naoto Ueno.. He is now with the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. You and I 1st met when you were ahead of the Morgan Welch Clinic in Houston, Texas. By the way on a personal note. I miss seeing you so I'm really happy to see you here today.
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Naoto T Ueno: Aloha Terry. And it's very nice to really join this. Podcast and I'm excited to, you know, go over science and some of the political thing that's ongoing at this point.
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Terry Arnold: Well, that's very exciting. We're recording this in May at the end of May of 2025. So there's going to be some different political conversations coming into. But I would like to hear about, of course, everything you know me. I want everything I would like to hear about what it's like to be in Hawaii
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Terry Arnold: with your research. What's going on? Tell me. I know you've got a lot of strong ties still in Japan. I want to hear everything. So let's start at the beginning. What has it been like to land in Hawaii after being at Md. Anderson? It's quite a change, I understand.
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Naoto T Ueno: It's a big change, because you're comparing to a place with a lot of resource at Md. Anderson, and limited resource which is in Hawaii. So either. The the best way to describe it is is like a car, right? So everybody drives a car and it goes to a certain
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Naoto T Ueno: distance, and it it will perform. So if you take Mdns, it's like a Porsche, and I'm driving a now a calora or Toyota.
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Naoto T Ueno: you know, and that's what it what it is, and if if I have to get a spare tire, then it makes it more difficult. Now that that's because of the historical aspect that we're located. And we have a significant cancer health disparity which is coming from poverty, geographic isolation. And you have to also remember depending on your race
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Naoto T Ueno: or ethnicity. The cancer deaths rate is significantly different, and this is particularly among the native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Filipino. Comparing to white or like Japanese American, the outcome is very different. And this is not simply
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Naoto T Ueno: because of the access. But there is a biological difference. And that's 1 of the the top priority of our cancer center. So our flagship priority is to understand and addressing health disparity. So we're tackling this complicated issue with limited resource. So there, that's a really at the personal level. It's a it's a
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Naoto T Ueno: it's tough and and it's a shock. But I enjoy what I'm doing in a capacity of what I could do. And I have a much more macro type of work. I do. Yeah.
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Terry Arnold: It's interesting. You would say this. I remember when you 1st told me you were leaving. I've never been to Hawaii, and I hope to come and visit you soon. There's things I would like to do up there with you, especially in the fundraising element. But,
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Terry Arnold: you know, I just hear it's really beautiful.
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Terry Arnold: I'll pull
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Terry Arnold: to help because you just mentioned, I know access to care can be a problem. But you just mentioned the biological differences
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Terry Arnold: you're getting in the way. Do you want to elaborate on that? A little bit more? Do you want to continue on?
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Terry Arnold: And happy research.
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Naoto T Ueno: So.
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Naoto T Ueno: you know, we are all human being, and you know the basic stuff is, there's not much of a difference, but there are difference in terms of like methylation of the genes. And this is how the the gene which is really the mapping of your, how you're gonna look or how you're gonna behave, and it's not
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Naoto T Ueno: there isn't
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Naoto T Ueno: this. What they call methylation is different, depending on the race. So therefore, when you give a drug. You know how you metabolize a drug could be different. Your cancer could behave different. And this is similar in inflammatory breast cancer.
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Naoto T Ueno: So we're very much interested in inflammatory breast cancer based on race. What is the outcome difference? And we know that, like black comparing to the white.
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Naoto T Ueno: we have some. We you know we well, I think it's been studied in Duke also, but black compared to white, the outcome is worse when you look into
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Naoto T Ueno: native Hawaiian and combined with Asian. The outcome is better
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Naoto T Ueno: now that said that if you look into more in detail the native Hawaiian, there seems to be more inflammatory breast cancer. But it's very difficult to really dissect this data, and the reason is
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Naoto T Ueno: historically, once that native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and Asian is all put together as a 1 lump of sum. And that that's a problem for us, because it's a completely different. It's like combining black and white together
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Naoto T Ueno: and try to do epidemiology. So we're the coding of who's native Hawaiian versus Asian American is not done in North America
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Naoto T Ueno: in the United States. So.
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Terry Arnold: Okay.
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Naoto T Ueno: In Hawaii. We try. We're working on this to separate the coding so that we could have a better understanding of exactly what is happening.
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Terry Arnold: I think that's exciting. I know that's 1 of the reasons that you've been so involved in Japan, because what you saw there.
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Naoto T Ueno: Right. So you know, proximity to not just Japan, but
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Naoto T Ueno: Asia. Obviously, Hawaii is in a very
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Naoto T Ueno: much closer than going to like Washington, DC. DC. Will take 10 h. Japan will only take about 7 to 8 h. So there is a definitely a proximity. And you have to remember that our demographic, probably about more than 50% were Asian descendants. So yes, it is. There's a cultural impact.
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Naoto T Ueno: And we are exploring whether we could actually conduct clinical trials, not just with us.
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Naoto T Ueno: Clinical trial group, but also like in Japan, is something that we are currently exploring. What we could do.
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Terry Arnold: I know that would be amazing. I know that you've taken me with you, Japan, a few times, and it was very interesting to see the cultural differences as much as Japan is this incredibly sophisticated high tech society, very beautiful clothes. Everything's so Couture. Different social elements get in the way of talking about cancer.
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Naoto T Ueno: That's correct and understanding the social difference. And a culturally difference is very important, and even taking care of the patient is important. So you'll probably notice that
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Naoto T Ueno: if you go to Md. Anderson when I was taking care of patient, we didn't particularly emphasize a cultural difference too much. Despite that we say these things is that happening at the clinical level? The answer is not really. I mean, it's pretty much everybody is treated
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Naoto T Ueno: in a way the same, and I think the same in terms of quality, of care is very important. But I think in all of our minds that what I believe religious belief or cultural belief.
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Naoto T Ueno: They're all different, right? And how do you do that? And and that is clearly that it's a much more
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Naoto T Ueno: there's a contrast is coming up much more clearly when you live in Hawaii, when there is no
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Naoto T Ueno: kind of a 1 demographic being representing strongly, and everybody has their opinion. So we have no majority. We're very diverse. We're considered one of the most diverse
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Naoto T Ueno: stayed in the United States. And
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Naoto T Ueno: it's interesting, you know. I don't have a really answer of solving these things, but the awareness of culturally sensitive approach for providing better care
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Naoto T Ueno: is very important.
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Terry Arnold: It's fascinating for me, because, especially when when you think, when you see Japan being such a sophisticated forward country, the fact that to talk about having cancer would not be viewed as something comfortable. It was interesting. You telling me what you're telling me. Now, can we talk about the research you're doing right now. You
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Terry Arnold: took a lot of research with you, I guess, because you took a lot of research with you who are very interested in this program, and I remember you telling me they were being very brave.
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Terry Arnold: because, like you said earlier, they're not driving the Ferrari. They they don't. They didn't have as many unlimited resources
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Terry Arnold: they were having to create a lot of things. There wasn't the same big budgets. And then, obviously, we can talk about budget cuts soon what's real, what's not real.
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Terry Arnold: But let's talk about the research first.st
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Naoto T Ueno: That's what people really want to know.
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Naoto T Ueno: Right?
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Naoto T Ueno: So you know, our research is really trying to understand why inflammatory breast cancer behaves aggressively and not just being behaving aggressively. What's really.
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Naoto T Ueno: you know, molecular level cause that's causing this. So we have dissected initially more of a targeting like on the surface called Egfr, and eventually we went to the level of in the DNA level, or transcriptional factor, which is really regulating DNA, and there is a target called egr one.
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Naoto T Ueno: So that's really the fundamental component to it. And we think this is one of the important target in inflammatory breast cancer. And this Egr one not just regulate the cancer, but it regulates the surrounding of the cancer called tumor microenvironment. So we have data. How this is a.
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Naoto T Ueno: you know, impacting the surrounding of the cancer, and then, by suppressing this, it helps to shrink the tumor and make the cancer less sensitive, and it could make the immunotherapy to be more effective.
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Naoto T Ueno: So we want to target this Egr one. So from here I can't really go in too much in details. But over this past years we have been successful developing new drug.
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Naoto T Ueno: And so now the new drug is, the conceptual part is almost done. And really we need to convert and translate so that it is something that we could bring it into the clinic. And that's the area that we're focusing. And we're tackling this from multiple angles. So that
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Naoto T Ueno: within this one or or 2 years that we really could talk about
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Naoto T Ueno: that, this is an important target. So that yeah, that's reason.
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Terry Arnold: That the Ibc network has funded. And so the idea that maybe, would it be possible to consider this might be ready for a clinical trial in 2 years, or is that too soon?
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Terry Arnold: Probably 3 to 4 years is what I'd like to pay
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Terry Arnold: and see. That's 1 of the things.
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Naoto T Ueno: One to 2 years is gonna be it's gonna be a lie. But it's rapidly progressing.
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Naoto T Ueno: And I
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Naoto T Ueno: and I can't go in detail because it it does involve intellectual property. And it's important to preserve that component.
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Naoto T Ueno: But we're we're excited about type of the research we're doing. Yeah.
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Terry Arnold: Well, I know you are, and I'm glad that you're doing it. I just wish science could be faster, but I know there's reasons for it to be slow for safety and proper testing and things, but also to to see progress and funding is a big part of your progress.
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Terry Arnold: So can we talk about what's happening right now? Some people say it's a hot mess right now.
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Terry Arnold: Some people.
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Naoto T Ueno: It is a kind of a different.
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Terry Arnold: Don't want to talk about it, you know, are always willing to talk about everything.
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Terry Arnold: So what do you want?
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Terry Arnold: Well, funding.
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Naoto T Ueno: There's nothing to hide about. What? What's going on. Okay? So it's not that I want to talk everything about it. But but
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Naoto T Ueno: it's important to talk is my position
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Naoto T Ueno: in a very rational way in a constructive way. So we recognize that the current administration direction has changed and it's a reality, and we have to accept this.
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Naoto T Ueno: We don't know exactly where we stand. And you know we're having this conversation at the last week of May, and
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Naoto T Ueno: we don't know the how exactly. They're going to be cutting the budget. We know it's about
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Naoto T Ueno: 40% or 31 to 40%.
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Naoto T Ueno: But that is a more of a Nih. And then we also know that you know, this is trickle down to Nci. And then the question is, is this going to be an individual grant? Or is it going to be more cut in the the more of a programmatic type of cut? Or is it gonna be the support to the cancer center? So the we have different buckets of money.
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Naoto T Ueno: So until we see that
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Naoto T Ueno: and one till the budget is really confirmed. As you know, President Trump has put his budget already, and
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Naoto T Ueno: but that budget has to be further negotiated with between the Congress and Senate. So now it went to the Senate and Senate has lots of different opinion. And so so until we see this, we don't know right? And then there's a 15% cut of the what we call indirect indirect is to help multiple
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Naoto T Ueno: you know, surrounding support of the the Grant activities. And it's a very important many places.
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Naoto T Ueno: The indirect cost is above 50%. So it's really a gap between 50 and
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Naoto T Ueno: 15. So even that there was an injunction filed by 22 States, mostly Democratic states. And we don't know. This injunction is, gonna be more of a permanent one.
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Naoto T Ueno: And even if you block it, does administration going to honor? We don't know. So I'm giving you a lot of I don't know. And and so.
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Terry Arnold: Have this conversation, because, you know.
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Terry Arnold: budget cuts are always scary, but I know with my household I have to look at my spending. I have to look at what I have. I have to make corrections and things like that, but also, too, like, I think people have no clue where funding comes from.
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Terry Arnold: you know, and we and so you got the Nih and the Dod
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Terry Arnold: and was, there's a 3rd larger.
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Naoto T Ueno: Well, there's a nih. Okay? So the way you have to look the pocket of money is the Biggie. One is Nih and Nsf.
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Naoto T Ueno: okay? So.
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Terry Arnold: Yes, sir.
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Naoto T Ueno: A lot of people forget about it. But Nsf is really where it's a fundamental research. And it's not always biomedical. It's not biomedical research. But
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Naoto T Ueno: many times we collaborate for biomedical research. Nih is for biomedical research. Dod and other agency kind of stands in between. So both Nih and Nsf is impacted significantly, and we don't talk a lot about Nsf. But Nsf is equally important to
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Naoto T Ueno: NIH.
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Naoto T Ueno: I don't know if that would kind of make sense and.
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Terry Arnold: Well, that's okay. And then you've got the Department of Defense, which is funding.
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Naoto T Ueno: Right.
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Terry Arnold: That's the Dod.
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Naoto T Ueno: Yeah. And then here we have Bcrf and other, like a funding agency. Your agent, you know. I wouldn't call your agency, but your activity ongoing. So
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Naoto T Ueno: we are going to have a challenging time, and whether you call it challenging time, or it's a new era of how we see biomedical research and funding. And I
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Naoto T Ueno: you know I've been telling my staff that it will be mixed funding in the future. So yes, I record. I you know I encourage all my faculty to apply for this Grant agency.
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Naoto T Ueno: and but
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Naoto T Ueno: funding a project only by Federal funding. That type of funding mechanism is is probably it's gone now. So it has to be
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Naoto T Ueno: federal plus industry or federal plus philanthropic activities.
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Naoto T Ueno: And so it's gonna be mixed funding right? So.
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Terry Arnold: And you know
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Terry Arnold: I hate to to see something gone, but also, too, I think this is a really important time for people to step up and not to put in a plug for the Ibc network. But the thing is.
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Terry Arnold: even if the funding wasn't gone, I what got me started wanting to start. The charity and funding is a researcher showed me there his paper, and he'd gotten a perfect score. But then they triage the papers, and and they kind of want the best bang for the buck. Well, his paper, because all inflammatory, was at the bottom of the list, and they wrote.
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Terry Arnold: pay if and pay if they have it so, even though we had a perfect score
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Terry Arnold: by the time they paid, the ones they felt like were more powerful, it would affect more people. There was no money left for his paper.
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Terry Arnold: and then I just got a major paper that got a perfect score from another facility the other day, and I'm like, can you help us with this? Because, even though we got a perfect score by the time they got to us. There was no money left.
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Terry Arnold: and I don't think we think about the fact that they triage it. That rare diseases get less money.
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Terry Arnold: and I know people sometimes will say to me, Why should I care about inflammatory? I don't have that kind of cancer, or whatever. I feel very strongly. If we can stop an aggressive.
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Terry Arnold: fast growing cancer. It would apply to less aggressive forms of breast cancer that does make sense to me.
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Naoto T Ueno: Well, I think what you're telling is storytelling. What you're advocating is very important. So I could wear 2 hats right? So if I was an Ibc researcher. You know. I agree with what you're saying, and that's you know you have to push the agenda so that your priority improves when I wear my hat as a director.
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Naoto T Ueno: It's not only Ibc people work on multiple, different cancer, different type of gaps that they want to address, but we recognize that many people have their good story. But the good story is not always advocated, and if you advocate the story appropriately in the right context.
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Naoto T Ueno: that it's not about only science, it's a science plus this story.
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Naoto T Ueno: And and unfortunately, that story part is commonly missing. And it's something that we, as a director, I always encourage my faculty to talk with the community like you and
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Naoto T Ueno: talk with
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Naoto T Ueno: Different advocates, utilize social media, and
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Naoto T Ueno: engage, you know, in different level of community science as well as non science. So it's a multifaceted approach is needed.
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Naoto T Ueno: And we all know this story. It's nothing new. I'm telling you right. But given that.
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Naoto T Ueno: I think the the shock wave or shock that's given by the current administration, we have to further take this storytelling or engagement with a community to the next level. And that's what we're seeing.
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Naoto T Ueno: So it's kinda even a shock for more for people who haven't done those things in the past.
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Naoto T Ueno: People who have done those. It's really more about totality, of that. How much money I get, or I don't get right. So is this a difficult time? Yes, it is difficult, because suddenly I've been telling by that we may lose a lot of money. And what are we gonna do? So we're scrambling of how, how we're going to be doing this. But.
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Terry Arnold: People, though.
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Naoto T Ueno: We will, we will. We will recover eventually. Okay, we will, I'm confident.
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Terry Arnold: No.
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Naoto T Ueno: Yeah.
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Terry Arnold: I believe we will recover eventually, too. I do wonder about the harm done in the meantime. But also I'm like you. I want to talk about everything. I don't want to fight about everything. I want to get into solutions.
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Terry Arnold: I don't want to be playing the blame game. I'm like, okay, this is what's happening. What do we do to fix it right? And that is definitely why I started the Ibc network. Now,
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Terry Arnold: I would like to plan something with you. I was hoping we could do it this December of 25. But that's probably too soon. You know. There's this race that goes on in Hawaii every December. Big marathon.
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Terry Arnold: Yeah. Crap.
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Terry Arnold: I know we've been approached by a group that says that they will help us
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Terry Arnold: get bibs for these races. So I want to see a fun run for with the Ibc network.
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Naoto T Ueno: Do that. I mean, I think that
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Naoto T Ueno: the visibility. Of course, there's a lot of different. You know, community people trying to sell their things. But Honolulu month on is really popular here. So it's and it's.
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Terry Arnold: Love to see the Marathon tie into the Ibc network for 2026 in December 2026, so that run money can then go to your research, and we can bring more visibility to inflammatory, because, like just the other day, I was looking at a beautiful teaching education in a breast center at a major cancer hospital, and of course inflammatory wasn't mentioned.
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Terry Arnold: and I would love to to bring. I hate the word awareness. I I want educational mastery to you so hopefully we can, we can. We can put something together. But when you just mentioned
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Terry Arnold: the importance of conversation, how do we get people talking about what we need to do in Hawaii.
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Naoto T Ueno: You know, it goes 2 ways. And
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Naoto T Ueno: we just have to be, you know, spread more educational material with a different social media outlet. And it's not even
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Naoto T Ueno: Twitter or X anymore. And you know, you have to mobilize Instagram Tiktok and
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Naoto T Ueno: the content has to be somewhat create needs to be created by a different generation. Each of the generation have a different. You know what the need is, and
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Naoto T Ueno: you have to have a really a social savvy strategic communication officer who understand the issue that we're it's something it's not easy. And then and we even at our cancer center.
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Naoto T Ueno: Like Md. Anderson, we, we have a different outlet of pushing out the information. But
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Naoto T Ueno: sometimes the content is a little bit too dry. So
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Terry Arnold: I love that. You say that because I people think I spend all my time planning fundraisers, and I don't actually spend a lot of time doing other things.
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Terry Arnold: and they but but I tell you what I spend a lot of time doing is begging for stories. I beg for stories and people sometimes will be shy to tell me their story because they're like, Oh, my story is not that interesting? It's like, no.
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Terry Arnold: And then
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Terry Arnold: story is going to mirror somebody's story. It's gonna it's going to educate somebody. It's going to touch somebody. It's going to save a life.
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Terry Arnold: And I would love you to go back and encourage your patience to share stories with us.
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Naoto T Ueno: But telling us stories requires training. That's something I know. I I learned we all
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Naoto T Ueno: ask for story, and I tell the same thing for my faculty, but I can't get their story, because they don't know what to say.
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Terry Arnold: Oh, that's a good point.
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Terry Arnold: Maybe I need to put some more time in with prompts and training and making them comfortable because interesting.
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Naoto T Ueno: Training needed. So we do training with
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Naoto T Ueno: you know. So we have selected a few faculty who is naturally good at presentation, but really, even with a really smart people, they need training, including myself.
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Naoto T Ueno: So.
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Terry Arnold: And you've been very transparent with your stories about you going through cancer, which I think brings the sensitivity that is unique to you, to your patients.
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Terry Arnold: And and I'm proud of you for doing that, because I think sometimes we hold back and you don't hold back.
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Naoto T Ueno: Right. It's finding that right sweet spot for telling the story and
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Naoto T Ueno: and adding that emotional component, or some or better way to say is that how to connect with people you don't know.
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Naoto T Ueno: It's not an easy thing, and and and
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Naoto T Ueno: I could go sometimes too far, and sometimes I could be not enough to be empathetic. And.
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Naoto T Ueno: Terry, you're giving up very challenging questions. I don't even have a clear cut answer to it. And a lot of people like to believe that our physicians who are advocating for your disease like inflammatory breast cancer. They know what they're doing, but they don't.
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Naoto T Ueno: It's
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Naoto T Ueno: media out, you know, providing that information. It's called community outreach and engagement, which is really important. Part of Nci designated cancer center activities.
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Naoto T Ueno: Our cancer center is one of the really
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Naoto T Ueno: be the best in doing this. But even doing this, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of effort to, you know, reach out, and and we
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Naoto T Ueno: that we do this engagement not just as a broad community committee, but we have native Hawaiian Committee. We have Pacific Island Committee, and we have Filipino Committee depending on where the big gap is. We have to even create additional committees, so that
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Naoto T Ueno: we really
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Naoto T Ueno: are trying to understand what's happening in the community. It can be a 1 way message, and it's it's not easy.
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Terry Arnold: No, it's not easy, and you know I could talk to you all day long, and
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Terry Arnold: I always find it very interesting. But one of the things we were talking about earlier if we started is
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Terry Arnold: what are, you know? People worry about waste and medicine and things like that. You mentioned earlier. How you think artificial intelligence could be a really way to streamline to make things faster, more efficient. Would you like to comment on that? Because some people think it's gonna be wonderful. Some people are scared of it. What are your thoughts on that? I know we've been using it in medicine for a very long time. People just didn't know.
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Naoto T Ueno: That's correct. AI is always included in many of the technology. You just don't know. And then that's what the AI eventually should be. So when you look into inefficiency that people talk about how a grant is administered.
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Naoto T Ueno: Yes, there's a lot of you know, redundancy, inefficiency. So if the AI is truly accurately able to do this. I think there's gonna be an improvement, and maybe it is true that indirect costs could be reduced
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Terry Arnold: Well like. From what I understand, mammograms have been read by AI for years
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Terry Arnold: just to Streamline. Could you think about the volume of mammograms this center does in a year. How could a person keep up? So they were. They run through AI, and then they get to you too.
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Naoto T Ueno: I mean imaging reading, or even like you know, full body skin scan, scanning
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Naoto T Ueno: could be done. And one of our research is doing those things, because you know, you say that. Oh, we're going to look for, you know. Make sure that you don't have any kind of skin changes that's going to be leading to melanoma.
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Naoto T Ueno: You know our eyes is somewhat limited, right? So you could scan. And AI could actually help to say that this spot is suspicious. So, Doc, you need to take a look of that area. So there's a lot of exciting component to the AI and
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Naoto T Ueno: going back to that inefficiency. Or, you know, we're just. We're spending unnecessary time to really figure out administration or even take the laboratory research.
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Naoto T Ueno: It it will. I. I'm I'm on the more optimistic side that it will improve. But you you're right. It has to be
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Naoto T Ueno: accurate, right? And it has to be seamless, and you don't want based on AI that we have A, we create AI refugee like, you know, the people. You just said that they're afraid of it, and they're not gonna touch it or they're not gonna do anything.
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Naoto T Ueno: Then they're going to be behind. We don't want that, you know, everybody needs to benefit from the AI. So so we just have to be very conscious about what we're doing.
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Terry Arnold: Well, I know you're a busy guy, and I could talk to you all day, and I personally miss you because I consider you a friend. You have been so kind to me, because when I 1st met you here, you were the director of this clinic.
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Terry Arnold: and you always gave me a place in the table. You always treated me and the other advocates with respect, and and were open, and you gave us a chance to ask questions and not make us feel foolish, but also taught us some things and guided us to. And I appreciate that openness.
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Terry Arnold: and I would love to continue being supportive to you in Hawaii. So I would love to do something with you to bring some physicality to what you're doing. And also I'm very interested in the research because we have helped funded some of it. I'm hoping to continue funding it. I think it's really good that you broke down some of these government cuts, and because, by the way, these cuts haven't been implemented yet.
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Terry Arnold: as of May of 20.
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Naoto T Ueno: Just to be accurate that there has been some work, stop orders on certain grants.
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Terry Arnold: There has been work.
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Naoto T Ueno: Those are right. So those are more like act. You know clearly that it's related to Dei, or there has been some that I don't even understand why they stopped it. But the the massive cut that we're talking about has not reached to the center yet.
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Naoto T Ueno: That's what.
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Terry Arnold: The workshop orders that I'm aware of have been mainly about travel.
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Terry Arnold: The.
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Naoto T Ueno: No? Well, the work stop order I'm talking about is from Nih saying that your grant is not going to be funded anymore.
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Terry Arnold: Got it.
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Naoto T Ueno: And there are some grants, including ours. We have been not formally notified, but it's been notified by the program officer. So that is a great concern, and we are working with our local Federal representative to see if we could push, push back so.
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Terry Arnold: Well, this is where I'm going to do a shameless plug for the Ibc Network Foundation, because organizations like us. Obviously, the really big money comes from these organizations you're talking about. They're the ones giving millions. But there's no reason that we couldn't be that, too. And also, how do you think Pharma is reacting to some of these things. I think a lot of people have a lot of anger at Pharma saying, Oh, they're just making big bank, but they also spend a lot of money.
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Naoto T Ueno: They do?
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Terry Arnold: Research, a lot of investment.
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Naoto T Ueno: And I'm not going to be able to really critique about how much money they should be making. But they are spending a lot of money to research. But now, given the situation, I talked about mixed funding, and I do request the pharma to be paying more attention to provide
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Naoto T Ueno: external funding for academic researcher, because many of the drug original idea is coming from academic. So not just internal funding of their pharmaceutical company, but external, and then have a much more open space under confidential agreement, so that they could share reagent or drugs that allows to grow our research. And that's what I mean by mixed funding.
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Naoto T Ueno: And then there's also philanthropic activity like yours and and there's also Bcrf and Coleman all these things, but they are like
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Naoto T Ueno: they are very important, because sometimes these money is the trigger of doing something really innovative, something that you never thought about it by Pharma or by from Nih. And
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Naoto T Ueno: so so everybody has its own important role.
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Naoto T Ueno: But it's an
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Naoto T Ueno: it's the. It's the era of Nih alone is over is the way I see it. It's a mix it's in. We have to understand that we have to go through this mixed funding.
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Terry Arnold: I remember one particular project. We gave one of your researchers $180,000, and that was the seed money that she needed, and she went. It was either to the Nih or the Dod, and got like 2.8 million dollars, and if she hadn't had that seed money. She couldn't have gotten that bigger money, and that's someplace. The Ibc network is important. We can give that seed money. We want to also be the bigger money, too.
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Naoto T Ueno: Right. And then that funding resulted into the potential new target for drug creation. But and we're actually going to apply for a new new grant. But at the same time we need these money to accelerate the process. And that's the ask the the ask I discussed with you. Yeah.
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Terry Arnold: Right. Well, well, one of the things is we we've talked about a few things. But is there anything you want to say before we go, because you made a statement when we were starting that I want to wrap up with. Is there anything that we didn't get to cover that you wanted to cover today.
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Naoto T Ueno: No, I think we cover a lot. But as I said that, I wouldn't get too pessimistic about what's happening in the world. There's a lot of people good people trying to figure out, you know what, how we could work all to together
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Naoto T Ueno: so, and at at the same time, I think it's important to voice our concerns and opinion. This is not about to fight with somebody, but if we are silent and it doesn't go anywhere now. At the same time, there's Ibc research, and it's rare and aggressive.
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Naoto T Ueno: And further, if you don't, you know, voice your opinion, we're putting ourselves in a more difficult position. So we don't want that. So
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Naoto T Ueno: for the research of you know, Ibc.
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Naoto T Ueno: we need to have a strong voice, and
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Naoto T Ueno: and under the current condition it has to be even getting to more unified voice rather than.
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Terry Arnold: Yes.
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Naoto T Ueno: But he's just talking here and there.
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Terry Arnold: Strong message is very important. You you said something earlier. You said that science is always exciting.
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Terry Arnold: and that made me just smile so big when you said that, because I think it's exciting. I wish it wasn't necessary, but I do see advancements. And so I think that's a great thing to wrap up with that thought.
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Naoto T Ueno: I I agree. I I'm optimistic about that. Good thing will continue to happen. But we have to continue to push this real hard, to make that progress.
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Terry Arnold: Well, I hope people will contact you at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. I hope you follow Dr. Wayno's social media. He I don't know how you do it. I've walked down a hall with you before where you had your phone out, and you were literally texting someone in Japanese and talking to me in English and then sending out an email at the same time. I mean, you can multitask like no we've ever seen.
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Terry Arnold: but they can find you on all forms of social media. You have many, many papers published that they can access easily and so I hope people do contact you and I would love to see a really strong showing at a race that I want to plan for. In December of 26 we can bring strong attention, and if you've got some ideas of things you want us to do up there in Hawaii before then I would love to be a support to you through the Ibc Network Foundation.
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Naoto T Ueno: Great. Thank you very much, Mahalo nui Lola.
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Terry Arnold: Thank you, sir.