FDA names Farley director of the Office of Infectious Diseases
John Farley has been appointed director of the Office of Infectious Diseases (OID) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Office of New Drugs (OND). He had been acting director of OID since Edward Cox left the agency in August 2019 to join Regeneron.(RELATED: As the race for a permanent FDA commissioner picks up, agency turnover continues, Regulatory Focus 4 September 2019).
As acting director, Farley has presided over the OID’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including supervision of the regulatory review of the increased number of pre-investigational new drug and IND submissions for COVID-19 therapies and advancing drug programs, “As rapidly as possible and consistent with meeting our regulatory requirements,” OND director Peter Stein said in a statement.
Farley joined the US Food and Drug Administration in 2009 as deputy director of the Office of Antimicrobial Products. In that position, he was instrumental in the implementation of the 2016 21st Century Cures Act and spearheaded support for regulatory science research on antimicrobial resistance.
Before joining the agency, Farley was a faculty member at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and had directed the Pediatric AIDS Program, the Center for Clinical Trials and the AIDS Care and Treatment in Nigeria Project. He trained at the George Washington University School of Medicine and the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.