Varmus to quit as Sloan-Kettering head

Former National Institutes of Health director and Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus will leave his post as president of New York City's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as soon as his successor is chosen.Image: Public Library of Science According to linkurl:__Science__,;http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/01/polymath-scient.html Varmus sent an email to his Sloan-Kettering colleagues this morning announcing his decision to step down. He wrote that he'd stay at the institution until

Written byBob Grant

| 1 min read

Image: Public Library of Science

According to linkurl:__Science__,;http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/01/polymath-scient.html Varmus sent an email to his Sloan-Kettering colleagues this morning announcing his decision to step down. He wrote that he'd stay at the institution until a successor is found, and that he'd continue to run his lab, which focuses on the molecular mechanisms of oncogenesis. Varmus shared the 1989 linkurl:Nobel Prize;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1989/varmus-autobio.html in Physiology or Medicine for the identification of oncogenes, headed up the NIH from 1993 to 1999, and co-founded the Public Library of Science, an open access publishing group. More recently, Varmus has been advising President Barack Obama as a co-chair of the linkurl:Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.;http://www.ostp.gov/cs/pcast He has been the president of Sloan-Kettering since 2000. Varmus linkurl:told;http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/01/definitely-not.html __Science__ that his reason for leaving is to reinvigorate Sloan-Kettering with some new blood. "I've done this job long enough, and now someone else should do it," he said. __Correction (1/13): The original headline of this story incorrectly indicated that Varmus would be leaving Sloan-Kettering when in fact he plans to stay on as a lab head and teacher at the cancer center even after he steps down as president. __The Scientist__ regrets the error.__
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:Priority Setting at the NIH;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/55314/
[January 2009]*linkurl:Varmus, Lubchenco top Obama team;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55317/
[22nd December 2008]*linkurl:Varmus votes - how will you?;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54278/
[4th February 2008]

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Bob Grant

From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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