Piet Borst

“1999 will be remembered as the year that Piet Borst stepped down as director of research at The Netherlands Cancer Institute (NCI) after holding this position for 17 years,” incoming director Anton Berns told Nature Medicine.

Borst, who left the position at the Dutch mandatory retirement age of 65, will continue teaching at the University of Amsterdam and researching multi-drug resistance as an honorary staff member at the NCI. He is credited with expanding the institute, which now has around 1,500 employees, into one of the largest cancer research centers in Europe, and for improving the interaction between basic and clinical researchers.

Berns previously served as Head of Molecular Genetics at NCI. He inherits the job on the cusp of a period of massive expansion. With an FY00 budget of $87 million, the NCI is planning to build a new hospital and renovate current research facilities. “We are also hoping to get a new micro-array analysis facility up and running,” adds Berns. He says that other new areas of emphasis will include molecular pathology and genetic counseling for inherited cancers, building on the institute's strong database of patient records. Berns will continue to run his own laboratory researching mouse cancer models.

Borst, who was given the country's highest honor, Commander in the Order of the Dutch Lion, by the Queen of The Netherlands in November, says of Berns that he is “an outstanding scientist and administrator—the institute is in excellent hands.” His only concern for the future of the NCI is the weak political status of scientific research in Holland. “Science funding is lagging far behind…other Western countries',” he complains; “Compared to the substantial increases in funding for cancer research in the US, for instance, cancer research in The Netherlands is seriously underfunded.”