Singapore, April 10, 2008: FDA has appointed Dr Frank M Torti as Principal Deputy Commissioner and first Chief Scientist. The newly created Chief Scientist position stems from the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007. Dr Torti will join the FDA in May.

 

Dr Torti received his bachelors and masters from Johns Hopkins University, his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and his Master of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. He served as an intern and resident at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and a fellow of medical oncology at Stanford University where he subsequently joined the faculty and was tenured. He has written extensively on prostate and bladder cancer, designed and executed a number of cancer clinical trials, and has substantially contributed to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie inflammatory diseases and cancer.

 

Throughout his career, Dr Torti has served on and chaired a number of national health and medical committees. He currently serves on the National Institutes of Health's National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He also founded and serves as President of the Cancer Biology Training Consortium, a national society of cancer biology department chairs and program directors. He is the recipient of a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award.