FDA ANTI-INFECTIVE DIVISION DIRECTOR IS ABBOTT's MURRAY LUMPKIN, MD

Executive Summary

FDA ANTI-INFECTIVE DIVISION DIRECTOR IS ABBOTT's MURRAY LUMPKIN, MD, who will be filling a position that has been vacant since July 1988, the agency announced in a Dec. 1 press release. Lumpkin will become director of the Anti-Infective Drug Products Division Dec. 4. Anti-Infective Division Deputy Director Lillian Gavrilovich, MD, has served as acting director since the former division director Edward Tabor left FDA to join the National Cancer Institute a year and a half ago. At Abbott for two years, Lumpkin most recently held the position of director of international clinical research. Prior to his tenure at Abbott, Lumpkin spent three years as chief of pediatric infectious diseases and assistant medical director of East Tennessee Children's Hospital. After receiving his education at Davidson College and Bowman Gray Medical School in North Carolina, Lumpkin specialized in pediatric infectious disease at the Mayo Clinic. Following his residency, Lumpkin joined the faculty of the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. He also spent a year studying parasitic diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship. One of Lumpkin's first projects, the agency said, will be to coordinate with the Infectious Disease Society of America an update of the guidelines for the development and approval of antibiotic and other anti-infective drugs. FDA has a contract with the society to rewrite the guidelines, which date from 1977. Lumpkin will inherit a division that was recently cited by Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Deputy Director Gerald Meyer as having come a long way in reducing its backlog of NDAs. Through the efforts of Office of Drug Evaluation II Deputy Director Bruce Burlington, MD, and Acting Director Gavrilovich, Meyer said, the anti-infectives NDA backlog was reduced from 42 overdue NDAs to nine ("The Pink Sheet" Nov. 13, p. 10).