Abstract
Harold Varmus, MD, will step down as the director of the NCI on March 31.
After nearly 5 years on the job, Harold Varmus, MD, stepped down as director of the NCI on March 31. A former president of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY, one-time director of the NIH, and a winner of the Nobel Prize in 1989, Varmus will join the faculty of New York City's Weill Cornell Medical College, where he says he will continue working toward his goal “to understand cancer as best we can.”
The NCI's deputy director, Douglas R. Lowy, MD, began serving as interim director on April 1.
Noted cancer investigators say that Varmus's dedicated efforts spanned every division of the NCI and will continue to shape cancer research and patient care long after his departure.
“I think the whole cancer research community owes him a debt of gratitude for taking on the position when he did, and working so effectively in the role. We all recognize that it was a difficult time with respect to the NCI budget,” says Tyler Jacks, PhD, director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, in Cambridge, MA, and chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board. “There are important changes taking place in cancer research today, and Harold was intent on not letting the challenges stifle progress. He was the ideal person to keep the NCI on track and guide its development.”
Varmus announced his resignation several weeks after President Obama proposed the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in his State of the Union address in January, a program Varmus helped conceive and develop. If funded, the PMI will expand cancer research on genomics, informatics, and cancer biology.
“Harold Varmus brought a deep understanding of the importance of basic research and a deep appreciation for clinical research to the NCI,” says Dinah Singer, PhD, director of the NCI's Division of Cancer Biology at the Center for Cancer Research, and a member of the NCI executive committee. “He's really had an enormous impact across the board in NCI-supported research.”
Varmus says some of the NCI's most satisfying accomplishments during his tenure include: establishing two new centers, one for global health and another for cancer genomics; revamping investigator grants; and improving the efficiency of clinical trials by restructuring the NCI Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program. He also helped guide The Cancer Genome Atlas.
These accomplishments occurred despite significant financial constraints. Varmus became director in 2010, soon after the federal government posted its largest deficit in more than six decades. He also led the NCI through the start of sequestration and a government shutdown.
“He's a real example of the call to service,” Jacks says. “Harold could have done anything after his post-presidential phase at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and he chose to lead NCI.”
Comparing the strong financial times of the early 2000s with the tight budgets he faced as director of the NCI, Harold Varmus harked back to Mae West, who famously said, “I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better.”
Comparing the strong financial times of the early 2000s with the tight budgets he faced as director of the NCI, Harold Varmus harked back to Mae West, who famously said, “I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better.”
In New York, Varmus will study mutations that affect cell signaling and growth in lung adenocarcinoma in his laboratory in the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell. He'll also serve as an advisor to Laurie Glimcher, MD, the school's dean, and assist with further development of the New York Genome Center.
“There's no ideal time to leave a job like this,” says Varmus. “But, I did extend my stay because I wanted to see the president announce the Precision Medicine Initiative, which I care about a lot. I'll have to leave it to others to execute.”
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