Sensible Medicine endorses Vinay Prasad for Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the US FDA

Vinay Prasad is leaving Sensible Medicine to take a senior role at the the US FDA. He has our enthusiastic support. Prasad is slated to be the incoming CBER director, where he will regulate vaccines as well as cellular and gene therapy. In our opinion, there is no better candidate.

Vinay was born in Ohio to immigrant parents from India. He was valedictorian of LaPorte High School and attended Michigan State University on a full scholarship. At MSU, Prasad studied philosophy and physiology. He was the commencement speaker for the College of Arts and Letters on behalf of the Philosophy Department. You can read his speech here. The speech captures all the qualities that we know define Prasad, especially incisive wit and trenchant analysis. (It still shocks us how fast Prasad can get to the point of a new study.)

Vinay attended the University of Chicago, also on scholarship, where he met one of us (Adam Cifu). Vinay won the Chairman’s Award in internal medicine, given to the graduate with most promise in the field.

Vinay then attended Northwestern University for his internal medicine residency. There he won teaching awards as an intern and, eventually, the Gerald Grumet award for best graduating resident teacher. In those years, Prasad published a dozen papers in Academic Medicine, JAMA, and JAMA Internal medicine. Adam and Vinay framed the core concepts of Medical Reversal during these years.

Vinay completed his fellowship in oncology at the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. He was elected, by his peers, to be Chief Fellow. During this time he also finished his MPH from Johns Hopkins University. By the time he started a faculty position, he had authored more than 50 peer reviewed papers, and was working with Adam on Ending Medical Reversal.

Vinay began his faculty career at the Oregon Health and Science University where he won the Craig Okada Teaching Award for Best Teacher of the Fellowship Program; the Faculty Mentorship Award from Internal Medicine Residency Program; the J. David Bristow Award, given by the graduating medical students to the faculty member, “who exemplifies the ideals of the true physician as he or she conducts clinical practice with patients and colleagues,” and the Excellence in Research/Scholarship Mentoring Award as voted by the Internal Medicine Residents. He published hundreds of academic articles. He and Adam published Ending Medical Reversal in 2015 (which we like to think of as a cult classic). During these years, Vinay launched Plenary Session, which became the most popular oncology podcast.

Vinay was recruited to UCSF by now JAMA Editor in Chief Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo. At UCSF, Prasad continued clinical work at the San Francisco General Hospital, caring for underserved patients. At UCSF, he has won the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award. Prasad authored his second peer reviewed book, Malignant. He has now published more than 500 peer reviewed papers. He is among the few scientists with a single last author paper with over 1000 citations.

Vinay has also launched a Youtube channel which has grown to nearly 200,000 subscribers, he co-founded Sensible Medicine, and runs his own Substack. Prasad has written over 300 op-eds in all media outlets.

Over the last three years, it has been a pleasure to work together. The three of us seldom all agree on any one issue but our conversations have been enjoyable and enlightening. We are proud of what we have accomplished. We look forward to following Vinay’s work in DC and we are hopeful he returns to write for Sensible Medicine someday.

We can’t think of anyone more qualified to lead the biologics division. Prasad’s lifelong commitment to scientific rigor will help rebuild lost trust in regulatory bodies.

During his absence, we will increase our commitment to this site to keep it interesting, valuable, and enjoyable. We have great things in store.