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Long-awaited decision comes more than a year after Francis Collins resigned as director of the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.
Monica Bertagnolli currently leads the US National Cancer Institute (NCI).Credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu/Alamy
In a hotly anticipated decision, the White House will probably nominate Monica Bertagnolli, the current head of the US National Cancer Institute (NCI), to lead the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) next week, a source who is familiar with the decision told Nature.
If confirmed by the US Senate, Bertagnolli will take over the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world — based in Bethesda, Maryland — which has a budget of more than US$47 billion and is composed of 27 separate institutes and centres. The selection comes nearly a year and a half after geneticist Francis Collins, who helmed the agency for more than 12 years, stepped down in December 2021.
“I don’t think there could be a better choice for this role,” says Suzanne George, a medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, who has worked with Bertagnolli. “As a leader, she brings people together to tackle new challenges in novel, innovative and inclusive ways.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on Bertagnolli’s planned nomination on 19 April.
After serving a brief six-month stint as the first female NCI director, Bertagnolli would be the second permanent female director of the NIH if she is confirmed.
A cancer surgeon, Bertagnolli was also the first woman to lead the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s surgical-oncology division. Her research focused on the genetic mutations that lead to gastrointestinal cancer and how inflammation stimulates cancer growth.
She has also been president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, an organization in Alexandria, Virginia that represents cancer physicians, and has led the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a network that works with the NCI to develop and conduct cancer clinical trials.
Elizabeth Jaffee, a cancer immunologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, who leads US President Joe Biden’s cancer advisory panel, says Bertagnolli has a knack for bringing companies, government agencies and patient-advocacy groups together to accomplish her vision. This skill will serve Bertagnoilli well as she steps up to oversee research that is beyond her field of immediate expertise and pushes Congress to fund the agency.
In December, Bertagnolli announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. At an American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Orlando, Florida, this week, Bertagnolli said that her treatment had gone well and that her prognosis is “incredibly good”.
“It’s not a walk in the park,” she said of the experience. “But I’ve had tremendous support.” Bertagnolli also noted that she was a participant in a clinical trial to develop a new diagnostic testing approach.
That it has taken more than a year to find Collins’s replacement has raised some concerns given the NIH’s broad research portfolio and its role in funding COVID-19 research.
The potential nomination coincides with House Republicans vowing to investigate the NIH’s role related to the pandemic. The Senate confirmation process for NIH director picks is typically uncontroversial, but some worry that the politicization of science during the COVID-19 pandemic might erode the bipartisan support that the NIH has typically received.
The next NIH director will have their work cut out for them: not only will they have to manage congressional probes, but researchers have also called on the NIH to take bold action to bolster the diversity of the biomedical workforce, quicken the pace of innovation and ensure the agency continues to fund research at a rate matching inflation.
Lawrence Shulman, a clinician and specialist in health-services research at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says that Bergnatolli is a visionary leader. “It’s like a chess game, she’s always thinking several steps ahead,” he says. “She has a long experience of understanding cancer medicine from the trenches but also understands how large organizations work.”
In particular, Shulman says her push to accelerate clinical trials and diversify the populations enrolled in trials at the NCI, which is based in Bethesda, Maryland, will be a welcome change if applied to the NIH at large.
The White House and Bertagnolli did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The NIH referred Nature to the White House for comment.
