Major changes at US FDA, with new posts and appointments

The world of FDA regulation is changing rapidly and, in an effort to keep current, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has announced a major reorganization “The structure of the Office of the Commissioner that I inherited was created in 1970, when the FDA consisted of three centers and a field office,” Dr Hamburg said in an e-mail to agency staff.

“By 2011, we had grown to seven centers, and a Commissioner’s Office with more than 1,600 staff. Over the years, as Congress created new programs that cut across center responsibilities, those programs were placed by default in the Office of the Commissioner. The new organizational alignments more accurately reflect the agency’s responsibilities, subject matter expertise and mandates in an ever more complex world, where products and services do not fit into a single category,” she stated.