The US Food and Drug Administration is getting a new chief, at least on interim basis, as Frank Torti, currently FDA’s principal deputy commissioner and chief scientist, will take over as acting commissioner of FDA next week, according to an official with the US Department of Health and Human Services. As earlier reported, current FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach is leaving FDA, effective, Jan. 20, with the change in administration and the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama.

Torti joined FDA in May 2008 as FDA’s principal deputy commissioner and the agency’s first chief scientist with a background as a clinician, scientist, and researcher in molecular oncology, according to FDA. As chief scientist, Torti and his team were responsible for ensuring the quality and regulatory focus of FDA’s intramural research program and its regulatory role in clinical research trials. He was also responsible for the launch of the FDA Fellowship Program, a training program designed to attract up to 2000 professionals of varying disciplines.

Torti was formerly the Charles L. Spurr Professor of Medicine, chair of the Department of Cancer Biology, and director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. He also served on the National Institutes of Health’s National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He founded and served as president of the Cancer Biology Training Consortium, a national society of cancer biology department chairs and program directors, and was the recipient of a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award. Torti received his bachelor’s and master’s from Johns Hopkins University, his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and his master’s of public health from the Harvard School of Public Health. He served as an intern and resident at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and as a fellow of medical oncology at Stanford University, where he subsequently joined the faculty and was tenured.

Whom Obama will name as permanent FDA commissioner is still under consideration. A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) blog indicated that his decision may be forthcoming over the next several weeks. As WSJ reported last month, certain leading Democrats such as Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), chair of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which held hearings on FDA’s effectiveness in regulatory oversight following the high-profile incident of contaminated heparin, sent a letter to the Obama transition team requesting that current high-level officials of the agency not be named to the top post at FDA because the agency had been too closely positioned with the drug industry. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also the committee that held Congressional hearings in 2008 on the discussion draft of the Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2008, which seeks improvements for FDA’s inspection process for drug-manufacturing facilities.

If Obama listens to Stupak and others, that would be put Torti and Janet Woodcock, current director of FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, out of the running for the permanent job of heading FDA.

Other individuals that were reportedly under consideration for FDA’s top post include Joshua Sharfstein, commissioner of health for the city of Baltimore, and Steven Nissen, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.