FDA frontrunner has knack for crisis management

Out of nowhere, it seems, cancer researcher Dr. Stephen Hahn has emerged as the most likely candidate to be nominated to run the FDA. In a new profile of Hahn, now an executive at MD Anderson Cancer Center, STAT’s Washington correspondents Nicholas Florko and Lev Facher examine the controversies that Hahn has navigated over the years, as well as the savvy he’s shown in handling them.

The man who may very well become the nation’s top drug regulator is not a swamp creature. Before his interview with President Trump last week, he’d only been to Washington once in a formal capacity.

Meanwhile, STAT’s Ed Silverman is out with a piece examining Trump’s apparent willingness to skip over former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s chosen successor, Ned Sharpless, who’s currently running the agency in an interim capacity. It may have something to do with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who in many ways operated in Gottlieb’s shadow.