New NIH chief stress­es fo­cus on obe­si­ty, clin­i­cal tri­al chal­lenges

The new leader of the NIH is wor­ried about obe­si­ty.

Mon­i­ca Bertag­nol­li, who was con­firmed as the new NIH di­rec­tor last week, said that dur­ing her first meet­ing with the NIH in­sti­tute heads, she posed a ques­tion: “Is there any­body in this room who isn’t wor­ried about obe­si­ty?”

“The an­swer is re­al­ly no,” she told the Friends of Can­cer Re­search an­nu­al meet­ing on Tues­day.

Her com­ments ar­rive as block­buster GLP-1s have shown they can re­duce ma­jor car­dio­vas­cu­lar risks, among oth­er ben­e­fits. Speak­ing along­side FDA Com­mis­sion­er Robert Califf, Bertag­nol­li dis­cussed clin­i­cal tri­als, de­clin­ing life ex­pectan­cy in the US, and the role of in­sur­ers in en­sur­ing re­search gets car­ried out.

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