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Scott Gottlieb's immediate replacement at the head of the Food and Drug Administration will be Norman "Ned" Sharpless, the current director of the National Cancer Institute, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Sharpless will assume the role of Acting Chief of the FDA after Gottlieb's departure in less than a month.
Azar's statement was delivered Tuesday at a hearing before the House subcommittee on energy and trade health. It was soon confirmed by the HHS and the FDA on social media. NCI's current Deputy Director, Doug Lowy, will assume the role of Sharpless as Director of the NCI.
Sharpless, 52, like his predecessor Gottlieb, has a medical and scientific background. He has had a distinguished career as a physician and researcher in the field of oncology for more than 20 years. Before accepting his position at NCI in 2017, he was Director of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina.
Gottlieb made Sharpless sound approval on Twitter, and Politico reports that he has explicitly recommended Sharpless to take over the FDA.
The sudden retirement of Gottlieb, announced last week and effective next month, surprised everyone. He was certainly one of the most competent officials in the Trump administration. During his brief tenure at the helm of the FDA, he encouraged faster development and approval of new treatments, including generic drugs, and aggressively attacked the tobacco and cigarette industry. electronic. proposed regulations. Unsurprisingly, tobacco inventories rose and biotech stocks dropped shortly after the announcement of his retirement. Gottlieb said he wanted to spend more time with his family.
The question of where Sharpless might fall is an open question, although Azar said in a statement that "ongoing efforts in drug approval and the fight against the opioid crisis, the modernization of security food and the rapid increase in the consumption of electronic cigarettes by young people. "
"I am grateful to President and Secretary Azar for the confidence he has shown in asking me to assume the role of Acting Commissioner of the FDA," Sharpless said in a statement to Gizmodo. "It will be an honor to advance the FDA's critical public health mission and to continue on the priorities set by President Trump, Secretary Azar and Commissioner Gottlieb alongside leaders and staff of the FDA. 39; agency. "
Sharpless, like Gottlieb, already has links with the pharmaceutical industry. He is on the inventors' list of several patents and is a co-founder of G1 Therapeutics, a startup that hopes to develop drugs that can improve the results of other chemotherapy drugs while reducing the severity of side effects. And in 2016, the year before he took control of NCI, he received more than $ 5,000 in payments from the industry, including consulting fees, from Pfizer.
Unlike Gottlieb, who previously wrote for conservative think tanks, Sharpless does not seem to be a Republican. According to the records of the Federal Electoral Commission, he donated to the election efforts of former President Barack Obama during his two presidential campaigns.
This article has been updated to include the Sharpless statement.
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