Politics, Policy & Law
Biden’s science team & early cancer detection: a BioCentury podcast
As Joe Biden readies to become president, the shape of who will lead HHS, FDA, science policy and the new administration’s COVID-19 response is coming into focus. On the latest edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury editors discuss who is in the running to become FDA commissioner and who has already been tapped for key roles in the new administration. They then take a look at the newest entrants to the liquid biopsy space.
For the top FDA post, Washington Editor Steve Usdin says there is a great deal of support in the life sciences community for Janet Woodcock, who is likely to be picked to be acting FDA commissioner, to succeed Stephen Hahn on a permanent basis.
“There are a lot of people in FDA and in the life sciences ecosystem who think that she would be a fantastic FDA commissioner,” says Usdin. “She really created the idea of regulatory innovation. She’s responsible for a lot of the forward motion that has made it possible to develop drugs more rapidly, to do it more efficiently, to do it with more input from the patient community.”
Usdin and Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn discuss the two sets of people who are against a Woodcock pick: those who believe she was too cozy with industry and those who take issue with some of the decisions she made while head of FDA’s CDER, including her intervention in the review of Exondys 51 eteplirsen from Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:SRPT).