Oct. 3 was Monica M. Bertagnolli’s first day on the job as the 16th director of the National Cancer Institute.
“When President Biden appointed me, I knew I was joining a storied institution made up of smart, dedicated people who share my passion to improve the outlook for people with cancer,” Bertagnolli wrote in an email to her new colleagues at NCI. “Working together, I believe that there is nothing we can’t do, in partnership with our many colleagues in the broader cancer community.
“We have lightning in a bottle, and I am determined that we must not waste it.”
Bertagnolli is the first woman and the first chair of a clinical trials cooperative group to hold the position of NCI director. Her appointment was announced by President Biden nearly two months ago. Bertagnolli succeeds Norman E. Sharpless, who stepped down as director in April 2022 (The Cancer Letter, Aug. 10; July 21, 2022).
“I am thrilled to begin my work at NCI, in partnership with the cancer community,” Bertagnolli said in a statement. “I think of the patients I’ve lost in 37 years as a doctor and how much more we can do for people today. That progress drives me to do more—to do everything we can to save more lives.”
“I see our work as aimed at three broad goals: understanding how cancer arises and what biological processes it disrupts; developing and testing new prevention and therapy approaches; and partnering with patients to develop ways for all people to receive the care that best meets their needs and, if they wish, to participate in research.”
Bertagnolli will lead NCI at a time when the White House is directing federal agencies to focus on halving the cancer death rate in the United States over the next 25 years—a goal of Biden’s reignited Cancer Moonshot (The Cancer Letter, Feb. 4, 2022).
We have lightning in a bottle, and I am determined that we must not waste it.
Monica M. Bertagnolli
“With the passion and commitment of the president and his administration to the Cancer Moonshot, I believe the opportunities before us to improve the outlook for cancer patients are unprecedented,” Bertagnolli said.
Douglas R. Lowy, who has served three stints as NCI acting director over the past 8 years, has resumed his role as principal deputy director and will continue his work as chief of the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology in NCI’s Center for Cancer Research.
“Today is [Monica’s] first day on the job and it is fantastic to have somebody who is appointed by the president who has the confidence of the president and the administration to carry forward the Cancer Moonshot,” Lowy said in his director’s report Oct. 3 at the annual meeting of the Association of American Cancer Institutes in Kansas City, Mo. “One of the great things I think about Monica coming in is that she’s been the head of one of the cooperative groups for a long time. Doing clinical trials is what she does for a living, and I really think she’s going to be enormously helpful in this area.”
Bertagnolli joins NCI from Harvard Medical School, where she served as the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery and as chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She was also a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
“Dr. Bertagnolli brings exceptional experience to NIH as a surgical oncologist, professor, scientist and leader in the cancer research community,” said Acting NIH Director Lawrence A. Tabak. “She is ideally suited to lead NCI at a point in time when opportunities abound for major advancements in cancer research and cancer care.”
Earlier in her career, she led the Adenoma Prevention with Celecoxib Trial, which showed that daily use of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib (Celebrex) could lower the risk of precancerous colorectal polyps coming back.
Bertagnolli served as chair of Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a clinical trials cooperative group funded through NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network.
Her leadership in the NCI-funded Cooperative Groups Program has led to the integration of tumor-specific biomarkers in clinical trial protocols. More recently, her research on the APC gene and the role of inflammation in influencing its activity has transformed our understanding of how colorectal cancer develops.
We owe it to everyone who has lost a loved one too soon to this vicious group of diseases to continue our work with even greater resolve, humility, and urgency.
Monica M. Bertagnolli
Bertagnolli also has served as vice president of Coalition of Cancer Cooperative Groups, president of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Foundation, and CEO of Alliance Foundation Trials, LLC.
She served as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 2018-2019 and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Princeton University and a medical degree from the University of Utah School of Medicine, completing a residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She served as an attending surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center before joining Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 1999.
Bertagnolli’s email Oct. 3 to the NCI community follows:
Dear NCI Colleagues,
It is my great pleasure to write to you today—my first act as NCI director. I am thrilled to begin my work with you. Although I have interacted with NCI in different ways in the past, I am proud to now lead such an impressive organization—one that I have admired for many years.
I want to join the entire cancer community in thanking Doug Lowy for serving as acting director. As a world-renowned scientist who has made his career at NIH, Doug exemplifies the very best of public service, and I am both honored and lucky that he will continue as principal deputy director for the institute.
Over the course of my career as a surgical oncologist, I have seen truly life-saving progress against cancer, but also profound tragedy. Put simply, I hate cancer. The pain of lost patients and devastated families drives my commitment to improve the way we develop interventions and deliver cancer care for all—to challenge conventional thinking and remove arbitrary restrictions.
When President Biden appointed me, I knew I was joining a storied institution made up of smart, dedicated people who share my passion to improve the outlook for people with cancer. The complexities of cancer and cancer care demand that we work with our colleagues across NIH, HHS, and other government agencies, the private, academic, and non-profit sectors, and across scientific disciplines. Working together, I believe that there is nothing we can’t do, in partnership with our many colleagues in the broader cancer community.
We owe it to everyone who has lost a loved one too soon to this vicious group of diseases to continue our work with even greater resolve, humility, and urgency. We must be willing to admit where our efforts have fallen short and be open to new ideas. With strategic, goal-oriented collaboration, we can ensure that the very best ideas are tested efficiently, and that effective approaches are rapidly disseminated to everyone who needs them.
All of us at NCI, along with cancer researchers and frontline cancer care providers across the nation—and most importantly, patients—have an unprecedented opportunity in the form of a President and First Lady who share our passion in a deeply personal way and are committed to ending cancer as we know it. We have lightning in a bottle, and I am determined that we must not waste it.
I look forward to learning from you and with you as we embrace, together, the opportunities ahead.
Respectfully yours,
Monica
Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D. (she/her/hers)
Director
National Cancer Institute
