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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday named oncologist Dr. Monica Bertagnoli as director of the National Institutes of Health.
Bertagnoli is a cancer surgeon and researcher who last fall became the first female director of the NIH National Cancer Institute. If confirmed by her Senate, she would be the second woman appointed to the Executive Board of the NIH, one of the world’s leading biomedical research institutions.
“Dr. Bertagnoli has spent a career pioneering scientific discovery, pushing the boundaries of what is possible to improve cancer prevention and treatment,” Biden said in a statement. She “ensures that the NIH will continue to be an engine of innovation to improve the health of the American public.”
Bertagnoli will also bring a patient perspective to his work. Shortly after her appointment as NCI director, she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.
“Knowing about cancer as a doctor is one thing and experiencing it firsthand as a patient is one thing,” Bertagnoli said in December when he announced his diagnosis and treatment plan. “To everyone who has cancer today, I really am with you on this issue.”
Cancer is a top priority for Biden, who lost his adult son Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
But the NIH, with a $47 billion budget, funds a wide range of medical research beyond cancer, including infectious diseases, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases, diabetes, drug addiction, and mental health. supervising.
The NIH has been without a permanent director since noted geneticist Dr. Francis Collins stepped down in December 2021 after 12 years at the helm. If approved, Bertagnoli will succeed Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the agency.
Prior to his appointment as NCI Director, Bertagnoli was a professor at Harvard University and a cancer surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The daughter of first-generation Italian and French Basque immigrants, she grew up on a ranch in southwestern Wyoming. She earned an engineering degree from Princeton University and attended medical school at the University of Utah.
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