Monica BertagnolliASCO/Glenn DavenportThe White House announced today (August 10) that Harvard cancer surgeon Monica Bertagnolli will end up being the next director of the National Cancer Institute, which oversees the Cancer Moonshot Initiative and funds most of United States cancer research. Bertagnolli will change Ned Sharpless, who resigned the post in April, to become the first female director of the NCI considering that the agency was founded in 1937, STAT reported last month. The institute is the largest within the National Institutes of Health and has an annual spending plan of almost $7 billion.”Dr. Bertagnolli is a great choice to be the 16th director of the National Cancer Institute,” Sharpless tells STAT. “Shes a magnificent surgeon and national leader in cancer clinical trials. Shes just the ideal individual to lead President Bidens Cancer Moonshot,” an effort to treat cancer developed by Biden as Vice President in 2016, not long after his son had died of brain cancer. Bertagnolli is currently a cosmetic surgeon at the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center and a teacher at Harvard Medical School. She has actually previously served as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and as the first lady chief of surgical oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center.Science reports that one of her first tasks will be to guide the Cancer Moonshot in its brand-new goal of cutting cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years, which President Biden revealed this February. Bertagnolli will also take over ongoing NCI efforts to increase grant funding, improve variety in cancer research study, and shrink cancer death rates amongst Black people.