Frank Torti is excited about taking on what promises to be an onerous job. As the first chief scientist at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he is eager to help the embattled organization use the latest research and technology to create more rigorous and efficient regulatory controls for approving new drugs. “I think I can help them break new scientific ground,” he says. See CV

After earning a biology degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Torti pursued an MD at Harvard Medical School. An interest in the molecular biochemistry of nutrition then led him to do a Master's in public health at Harvard. But, motivated in part by his parents' battle against cancer, he eventually accepted a fellowship in oncology at Stanford University.

Torti went on to create one of the first clinics treating genital and urinary cancer to bring together radiation therapists, medical oncologists and surgeons. And he developed chemotherapy regimens for bladder and prostate cancers that became standards of care. As executive director of the Northern California Oncology Group, Torti also learned the inner workings of trial design and patient recruitment.

But he missed the laboratory and so made an unusual move, temporarily resigning his faculty position to become a visiting scholar in Stanford's pharmacology department. There, he discovered basic molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of proteins involved in iron metabolism, and how these are modified by cancer.

Torti jumped at the chance to lead both Wake Forest's Comprehensive Cancer Center and its basic science department in cancer biology. There, his success in building clinical trials and training programmes brought widespread recognition, and his basic-science research led to a prestigious National Institutes of Health MERIT award. “Frank brought Wake Forest's Cancer Center from the backwater to be a major player,” says colleague Steve Akman. He predicts that Torti will help the FDA to recapture lost esteem by recruiting top talent and organizing the agency's responsibilities among its constituencies.

Torti says he wants to act as an advocate for the science community. He also wants to integrate cross-cutting themes — such as nanoscience and toxicogenomics — throughout the agency. And he plans to develop a top-notch fellowship training programme, hoping to make the agency more attractive to bright young scientists interested in translating basic science into clinical practice.