On Monday, May 17, President Obama announced his intent to appoint Dr. Harold Varmus to the position of director of the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Varmus is the former director of the NIH and a 1989 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies of the genetic basis of cancer. Dr. Varmus served as the director of NIH under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1999. He returns to Washington, DC after serving as president of the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York since January 2000. Dr. Varmus currently serves as co-chair of President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Read the White House Press Release

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 20, FasterCures and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation will host a briefing with National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins entitled, "Leveraging Federal Investment to Speed the Development of Promising Therapies for Patients." The briefing will take place in Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room G-11 from 10:00-11:00 am. The briefing will focus on how the federal government can best use its allocated funds to transition advancements in the lab to tangible results for patients and consumers. In addition to Dr. Francis Collins, speakers will include Senators Richard J. Durbin and Richard C. Shelby, along with Richard J. Beall, President and CEO of Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Margaret Anderson, Executive Director of FasterCures, will moderate the briefing. Please submit your RSVP to Angelo Bouselli at abouselli@fastercures.org at your earliest convenience; spaces limited.

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The Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health will host a workshop on Monday, May 24 entitled "Challenges and Opportunities in Using Newborn Screening Samples for Translational Research." Each year, newborn screening reaches over 4 million babies born in the United States and through the collection of a blood sample, identifies thousands with health conditions that benefit from early intervention. Individual states store residual dried blood specimens not only for use in screening, but also for quality control, development of new tests, forensic studies, and epidemiological purposes. The Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health will examine the use of newborn screening samples for translational research by exploring issues such as privacy rights and research opportunities. Registration is free and requested in advance due to space limitations. Please feel free to share this announcement with other interested colleagues.

View the full agenda and list of speakers

On Thursday, May 14, the House of Representatives voted 292-126 to return the America COMPETES Act, HR 5116, to the House Science and Technology Committee. While the America COMPETES Act aimed to nearly double the budgets of the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, many Congress members felt that the price tag was too big and the programs too expansive.

Today, Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) reintroduced the bill as HR 5325. The bill failed to garner the two-thirds majority needed. "I'm disappointed, but not deterred," stated Gordon.

Read the America COMPETES Act in full

Read Today's press release from the Committee