CEHS member Norman Sharpless considered for National Cancer Institute directorship
Norman Sharpless, MD
President Donald Trump has announced his intent to appoint Norman E. (Ned) Sharpless, MD, as director of the National Cancer Institute. Sharpless, who is the director of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Wellcome Distinguished Professor in Cancer Research and UNC Center for Environmental Health and Susceptibility member, would succeed Douglas Lowy, MD, who has served as acting director of the NCI since April 2015.
A native of Greensboro, N.C., Sharpless was a Morehead-Cain Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics (with distinction) and his medical degree (with honors and distinction) from the UNC School of Medicine. He completed his residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and his clinical and research fellowship in hematology and oncology at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care in Boston. He returned to Chapel Hill to accept a UNC Lineberger faculty appointment in 2002.
Sharpless, who has served as director of UNC Lineberger since January 2014, is internationally recognized for his research into how normal cells age and undergo malignant conversion. His lab has extensively studied the interaction and regulation of the p16INK4a tumor suppressor and the proliferative CDK4/6 kinases in aging and cancer. Sharpless also is an attending hematologist oncologist at N.C. Cancer Hospital, UNC Lineberger’s clinical home.
