The Senate on Tuesday voted 62-36 to confirm Monica Bertagnolli, head of the National Cancer Institute, as director of the National Institutes of Health.
In May, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Bertagnolli to serve as NIH director.
Xavier Becerra, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, welcomed the Senate confirmation of Bertagnolli, who will replace Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak.
Bertagnolli “has built a reputation for her willingness to take on the deadliest diseases facing patients and as a powerful advocate for cancer patients, working to end cancer as we know it. That same tireless energy and clear vision will serve her well as NIH director,” Becerra said in a statement.
Before becoming the 16th NCI director, Bertagnolli was a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
She is a former research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who served as group chair of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and led gastrointestinal science efforts within the Cooperative Groups Program, which is now called NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.
Bertagnolli is a past president and board chairman of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The physician-scientist has also served on the boards of the American Cancer Society and the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
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