FDA chief of staff shifting to CBER

Julie Tierney is stepping down as FDA’s chief of staff and will move into a new position, as deputy center director for strategy, policy and legislation at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Andrew Zacher, currently deputy chief of staff, will replace Tierney on an acting basis until a new permanent chief of staff is appointed. In a message to agency staff, FDA Commissioner Rob Califf noted Tierney’s role in helping the agency handle the COVID‐19 pandemic and Mpox crisis, developing and implementing reforms of FDA’s human foods and tobacco programs, as well as facilitating its response to infant formula and drug product supply chain crises.

President Joe Biden intends to appoint W. Kimryn Rathmell to succeed Monica Bertagnolli as the director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Rathmell is physician-in-chief and chair of the department of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and has held several national leadership roles with NIH’s Cancer Genome Atlas, the NCI’s board of scientific advisers, and the Department of Defense Kidney Cancer Research Program. Bertagnolli was confirmed as NIH director on Nov. 7. If confirmed, Rathmell will be the institute’s seventeenth director. ...