The US Food and Drug Administration stated Tuesday that Dr. Richard Pazdur has been named head of its largest division, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which oversees the protection and regulation of most pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medicines.
The middle is also responsible for regulating merchandise like antiperspirants, sunscreens and fluoride toothpaste, in addition to making suggestions to replace drug labeling.
Pazdur got here to the FDA in 1999 because the leader of the Division of Oncology Drug Products. In 2017, he grew to become founding director of the Oncology Center of Excellence, part of the company created to advance the event and regulation of merchandise for sufferers with most cancers.
The earlier director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Dr. George Tidmarsh, abruptly resigned final week after the federal government began to evaluate “serious concerns about his personal conduct,” according to the Associated Press.
Tidmarsh, who took on the director’s job in July, left the company on the identical day a drugmaker related to certainly one of his former enterprise colleagues filed a lawsuit claiming that he made “false and defamatory statements” whereas on the FDA, the AP reported. The lawsuit, introduced by Aurinia Pharmaceuticals, alleged that Tidmarsh used his job on the FDA to pursue a “longstanding personal vendetta” in opposition to the chair of its board of administrators.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary stated in a statement that Pazdur might be match to go the middle, saying he “has a track record of success and is an impressive forward-thinking scientist.”
Pazdur has been honored with a number of awards, together with in 2015, when Fortune journal named him one of many 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. In 2017, Bloomberg named him to The Bloomberg 50 energy rating, and in 2020, he received the Simon M. Shubitz Cancer Prize and Lectureship from the University of Chicago Cancer Research Foundation.
He’s the creator of greater than 800 articles, abstracts and ebook chapters and two medical oncology textbooks, in keeping with his official FDA biography; earlier than becoming a member of the company, he was a professor of medication on the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
“Dr. Pazdur is a true regulatory innovator who will help guide our broader agenda to modernize the agency and streamline the approval process,” Makary stated.
Pazdur stated within the assertion that he’s honored to grow to be head of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at a time when “the FDA is achieving long-sought regulatory reforms.”
Pazdur will keep on as director of the Oncology Center of Excellence till a successor is chosen, the company stated.