A Republican senator is asking President-elect Trump to keep Dr. Francis Collins as head of the National Institutes of Health as the medical research agency is slated to receive almost $5 billion more for research over the next decade.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., called on Trump to keep Collins as the research institute’s director as his leadership is needed to implement the newly signed 21st Century Cures Act. Obama on Tuesday signed the biomedical research package, which provides $4.8 billion to NIH.
Collins was “instrumental in working with us on this law, and he deserves an opportunity to implement it,” Wicker said.
Wicker joins top Republicans, who this month sent Trump a letter asking him to keep Collins, saying he “is the right person, at the right time” to continue to lead the institue. Endorsing Collins were outgoing House energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, and Sen. Roy Blunt and Rep. Tom Cole, who are the chairmen of the appropriations committees that oversee NIH.
Trump has not made a decision on whom to tap for NIH. He has chosen Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., to lead Health and Human Services and has not made a decision on whom to lead the Food and Drug Administration.
Collins has led NIH since 2009. He previously led the project that first mapped the human genome.
