This morning, San Diego-based Illumina, Inc. announced that Gottlieb joined its board of directors effective Feb. 4.
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Since leaving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), former Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has been tapped by pharmaceutical companies for a number of boards of director positions due to his regulatory expertise.
This morning, San Diego-based Illumina, Inc. announced that Gottlieb joined its board of directors effective Feb. 4. Illumina Chief Executive Officer Francis deSouza said the gene-sequencing company “will benefit from Scott’s expertise in healthcare and public policy as we work to accelerate the adoption and impact of genomics into the standard of care in oncology, reproductive health and other clinical areas.”
Illumina isn’t the first board that will benefit from Gottlieb’s years of service at the FDA. Gottlieb has also joined the boards of directors at companies like Pfizer, which he joined weeks after resigning from his role as FDA commissioner. He also joined the boards of health-tech company Aetion and FasterCures, part of the Milken Institute.
Gottlieb left the FDA at the end of April 2019 and returned to his role as a special partner at New Enterprise Associates healthcare investment team. He is also a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. During his two-year tenure at the FDA, Gottlieb aggressively supported the approval of new branded drugs, as well as generics. Additionally, he tackled multiple public health problems, including the opioid epidemic that has been sweeping the country and vaping. Gottlieb stepped down from his role at the FDA, in part, due to the travel commitments that kept him away from his young family.
It’s safe to say that a man like Gottlieb is a valuable asset for any company in this space given his experience in the regulatory world, including his experience with real-world data. While he was commissioner of the FDA, the use of real-world evidence or real-world data was something Gottlieb championed. RWE relates to the collection of information about a drug’s safety and efficacy outside the structure of a clinical trial.
As FDA commissioner, Gottlieb was credited with increasing the efficiency of the regulatory process for the development and review of novel drug and medical devices. He also oversaw the first approvals of gene therapy treatments for rare diseases, as well as the first CAR-T drug approvals for cancer. In addition, during his time as commissioner, Gottlieb advanced the FDA’s Oncology Center for Excellence and helped implement the 21st Century Cures Act to accelerate medical product development. Before he was selected as head of the FDA by President Trump, Gottlieb had previously served as the agency’s deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, and as a senior adviser for medical technology to the FDA commissioner.
For Illumina, bringing Gottlieb on board comes weeks after the company abandoned its $1.2 billion merger with Pacific Biosciences due to concerns over antitrust issues. When the merger was announced last year, the two companies said the combination of their technologies would pave “the path to a more perfect view of a genome.”
