President Joe Biden will appoint Monica Bertagnolli, MD, as the new director of the National Cancer Institute.
President Biden's choice will make Dr. Bertagnolli the first female president of the institute, according to an Aug. 10 White House news release. Dr. Bertagnolli is a professor of surgical oncology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She is also chief of the division of surgical oncology at Brigham and Womens' Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, also in Boston.
"I look forward to working with Dr. Bertagnolli to advance the president’s call to end cancer as we know it," HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in the release. "Dr. Bertagnolli’s decades of cancer research expertise around patient-centered care and her work to create more inclusive clinical trials will be instrumental as we accelerate the rate of research and innovation to fight cancer. Cancer knows no bounds and neither should our efforts to prevent cancer deaths."