In its continuing investigation into how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards research grants and contracts, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is seeking to determine whether Richard D. Klausner steered a $40 million contract to Harvard University while director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and during the time he was a candidate to become the school's president.

In a lengthy letter delivered this week to NIH, Harvard, and other organizations, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), committee chairman, and Rep. James Greenwood (R-Penn.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, questioned “whether Harvard University received favorable treatment” in receiving funds in March 2002 to help create the school's Molecular Target Laboratory (MTL).

Klausner “appears to have personally and substantially participated in the MTL initiative that NCI awarded to Harvard University at a time when he had disqualified himself from personally and substantially participating in any matters affecting Harvard,”...

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