FDA's 1st Chief Scientist speaks

Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration linkurl:named;http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2008/NEW01816.html cancer biologist linkurl:Frank Torti;http://www1.wfubmc.edu/canbio/Faculty/Torti+F.htm as the agency's first ever Chief Scientist. Torti, who is also the director of Wake Forest's linkurl:Comprehensive Cancer Center,;http://www1.wfubmc.edu/cancer/ will leave North Carolina and begin work early next month at the FDA. The researcher and clinician took time to talk with me and share his plans on building up the science side of the agency's mission. Torti, who will report directly to FDA commissioner linkurl:Andrew C. von Eschenbach;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/12978/ and oversee the FDA's linkurl:National Center for Toxicological Research,;http://www.fda.gov/NCTR/ said he hopes "not to remediate, but to augment" science at the FDA. "We intend to have a substantial impact across the board by not only developing new scientific insights through collaborations with academia, industry where appropriate, and others, as well as developing them within the FDA," Torti said, "but just pushing that science forward across the different centers of...