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# Gottlieb Talks to Staff About Scientific Advances, Priorities
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/gottlieb-talks-to-staff-about-scientific-advances-priorities/
- Published: 2017-05-19T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T22:24:40.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5138739

In his [first address ](https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Speeches/ucm558566.htm?ref=fdaweb.com)to FDA staff, commissioner **Scott Gottlieb** 5/15 talked about scientific advances that will give employees “better tools to do our regulatory work. Many of these tools and resources are being developed right here at FDA, in our labs, and at places like NCTR. Twenty-first century challenges require us to modernize how we do our own work to take advantage of advances that can help us better protect consumers and promote health by making the regulatory process, itself, more modern and efficient.”

Gottlieb also mentioned the Office of Regulatory Affairs’ (ORA) implementation of its Program Alignment “to greatly improve FDA’s primary and principal public health protection role. “As ORA’s mandate becomes more complex and more global, we look forward to achieving operational efficiencies that can improve our ability to fulfill our public health mission and protect consumers.”

As for challenges facing FDA, Gottlieb said more has to be done to help bring down drug costs for consumers. “Now, I know FDA doesn’t play a direct role in drug pricing,” he said, “but we still need to be taking meaningful steps to get more low cost alternatives to the market, to increase competition, and to give consumers more options. This is especially true when it comes to complex drugs and biosimilars. We also need to take steps to make sure the generic drug process isn’t being inappropriately gamed to delay competition and disadvantage consumers. I hope to have much more to say on this topic in the coming weeks.”

Implementing the 21st Century Cures Act is also a key priority, Gottlieb told staff. “We need to make sure we’re taking steps to foster innovation and regulating areas of promising new technology in ways that don’t raise the cost of development or reduce innovation,” he said. “We need to do all of these things without compromising our primary mandate to protect the public health.”

  
And, of course, the opioid addiction crisis is the agency’s greatest immediate challenge. “The epidemic of opioid addiction is not a problem that FDA can solve alone,” Gottlieb said. “ But we have an important role to play in reducing the rate of new abuse, and in giving health care providers the tools to reduce exposure to opioids to only clearly appropriate patients, so we can also help reduce the new cases of addiction. Addressing this tragedy is going to be one of my highest initial priorities. Now, I know FDA has already taken many important steps to address the opioid crisis. But the epidemic has continued to grow. I’ll be working with FDA’s senior career leadership and in the coming weeks hope to have more to say on how we take even more forceful steps to address this crisis.”