“Monica Bertagnolli appointed as new director of National Institutes of Health by President Biden”

CNN
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President Joe Biden will become Dr. The White House announced Monday that it will appoint Monica Bertagnolli, who currently heads the National Cancer Institute, as the next director of the National Institutes of Health.

In a statement Monday, Biden called Bertagnolli “a world-class physician and scientist whose vision and leadership will ensure that the NIH continues to be an engine of innovation to improve the health of the American people.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Bertagnolli would fill a position that has been vacant for over a year. She would head the country’s medical research agency and oversee 27 research institutes and centers focused on various areas of medical research such as cancer, the human genome, and allergies and infectious diseases.

Bertagnolli’s appointment as head of the NIH marks a rapid rise within the Biden administration. She was the first woman to head the NCI when she joined the institute last October. And just two months after heading the NCI, which is overseen by the NIH, she announced last December that she had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. She told NPR in February that she was still undergoing treatment.

If confirmed, Bertagnolli would succeed Dr. Lawrence Tabak, who has served as acting NIH director since the retirement of his predecessor, Francis Collins, in late 2021. Collins directed the NIH for 12 years.

Biden’s statement is also a nod to Bertagnolli’s involvement in advancing the president’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which aims to halve cancer deaths by 2047.

It’s an initiative dear to the President’s heart and was launched after the death of his son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.

Bertagnolli, Biden wrote, “brought together partners and resources from multiple sectors to launch pioneering efforts in cancer prevention and screening, a national childhood cancer navigation program, and additional programs to make clinical trials more accessible to more Americans.”

Before joining NCI, Bertagnolli was the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in the field of Surgical Oncology at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.