Session Chair Profile

Biography
Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach serves as Senior Advisor to BPC’s Health Innovation Initiative. He also serves as the president of Samaritan Health Initiatives, Inc. and as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. From 2006 to 2009 von Eschenbach served as Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he championed an agenda to improve the regulatory pathway for drugs and medical devices and fostered creative projects, including the FDA’s Critical Path Initiative (designed to bring modern tools of science to the product development process); the FDA’s Food Protection Plan; and several workforce initiatives, such as an agency-wide fellowship program and the development of a new integrated campus for the agency in White Oak, MD. Under his leadership, the FDA experienced dramatic increases in resources, which strengthened its mission to protect and promote public health. Prior to joining the FDA, von Eschenbach served for four years as Director of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, where he set an ambitious goal to eliminate suffering and death due to cancer by rapid acceleration and integration of the discovery-development-delivery continuum.