Biden Picks Biotech Executive to Lead New Biomedical Research Agency
Source: New York Times
Biden Picks Biotech Executive to Lead New Biomedical Research Agency
Dr. Renee Wegrzyn is President Biden’s choice to lead the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which is aimed at driving biomedical innovation.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Sept. 12, 2022
Updated 3:07 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Biden has selected Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, a Boston biotech executive with government experience, as the director of a new federal agency aimed at driving biomedical innovation, the White House said on Monday. ... Mr. Biden will announce his intention to appoint Dr. Wegrzyn, along with a series of steps to promote his so-called cancer moonshot initiative, during a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston on the 60th anniversary of the former president’s “moonshot” speech that ushered in an era of space travel.
Mr. Biden, whose son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015, has a deep personal commitment to advancing cancer research. He helped create the cancer moonshot when he was vice president and proposed the new biomedical agency this year as part of an effort to reinvigorate the initiative and, he has said, to “end cancer as we know it.”
Modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the biomedical research agency is known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. (In the argot of Washington, where every agency has an acronym, the defense research agency is called DARPA and the health agency is ARPA-H.)
Dr. Wegrzyn is currently a vice president of business development at Ginkgo Bioworks and the head of innovation at Concentric by Ginkgo, the company’s initiative to advance coronavirus testing and track the spread of the virus. She also worked at DARPA and its sister agency, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/us/politics/biden-cancer-arpa-h.html
