2023-05-15 18:24:25
US President Joe Biden announced, on Monday, his intention to nominate Monica Bertagnoli for the position of Director of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, after she was Director of the National Cancer Institute.
The White House issued a statement on Biden’s decision, saying that Bertagnoli “has spent her career pioneering scientific discovery and raising standards in advancing cancer treatment and prevention, in treating patients, and ensuring that patients in all communities have access to quality health care.”
Bertagnoli, according to the White House statement, was the first woman to hold the position of director of the National Cancer Institute, and the doctor began her term on October 3, 2022, and was the 16th director.
Prior to that, she was Professor of Surgical Oncology at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a member of the gastrointestinal cancer team at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts.
Throughout her career, Bertagnoli has been a forerunner in the field of clinical oncology, particularly in advancing the current understanding of the genetic mutation that leads to the development of gastrointestinal cancer, and the role of inflammation as a cause of cancer metastasis.
According to the National Cancer Institute website, the doctor led the digestive sciences initiatives between 1994 and 2011, through a program funded by the institute, and between 2011 and 2022, she was the head of the “Alliance for Clinical Trials in the Study of Digestive Tumors” group.
From 2007 to 2018, she served as Director of the Surgical Oncology Department at Dana Faber Cancer Center.
Born to immigrants from Italy and the French Basque Country, Bertagnoli grew up in southwestern Wyoming, and graduated from Princeton University with a BA in engineering before studying medicine at the University of Utah.
She subsequently trained in surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and was a research fellow in cancer immunology at the Dana Faber Institute.
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