Sharpless to Step Down as Head of National Cancer Institute

Ned Sharpless, M.D., has decided to step down from his position as director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, a position he has held since 2017.

NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers.

Sharpless will continue as NCI director through April 29, 2022. NCI Principal Deputy Director Douglas R. Lowy, M.D., will serve as NCI’s acting director effective April 30, 2022. Lowy served as NCI’s acting director from April 2015 to October 2017, following the resignation of Harold Varmus, M.D., and again in 2019 while Sharpless served as acting commissioner of FDA.

Sharpless was sworn in as the 15th director of NCI on Oct. 17, 2017. He also served as acting commissioner for Food and Drugs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for seven months in 2019, before returning to the NCI directorship.

An NIH release stated that Sharpless has championed health equity; developed important programs in data science, including the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative; and advocated forcefully for policies to ensure continued support for investigator-initiated research in cancer and diversity in the cancer research workforce. Amid the calls for racial justice in the summer of 2020, he led the creation of NCI’s Equity and Inclusion Program. 

“During my time in the federal government, I have been inspired by the ways that researchers, caregivers, advocates, and survivors have broken down silos to collaborate and embrace new ways of working together to solve some of the toughest problems in cancer. President Biden’s continued commitment to the Cancer Moonshot will foster even greater progress. The community stands ready to meet the President’s call to end cancer as we know it,” Sharpless said in a statement.

“The President’s goal of ending cancer as we know it today is grounded, in part, in the work of scientific discovery that Ned Sharpless has led at NCI,” said Danielle Carnival, Ph.D., White House Cancer Moonshot Coordinator, in a statement. “We have an audacious but achievable goal to reduce the cancer death rate by at least half in 25 years and to improve the experience of all whose lives are impacted by cancer—working across government to develop and deploy additional ways to prevent, detect and treat cancer—and Dr. Sharpless contributed greatly to that vision.”