Varmus to step down at Sloan-Kettering

Harold Varmus, M.D., president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, announced plans to step down after 10 years as chief executive of the 434-bed specialty hospital. In a letter to employees, Varmus said he will continue as president until his successor is named.

“I have greatly enjoyed this job, and I still do,” he said. “But I also believe that institutional leaders should ordinarily not stay in place for greatly extended periods, and that our institution would now benefit from a fresh approach to the issues it will face in the decade ahead.”

Varmus, 70, also said the cancer center's greatest immediate concern is demand for clinical space near its Manhattan campus. He noted the economic recovery and Sloan-Kettering's relative financial strength should prompt the hospital to expand and resume construction delayed in 2008 by the recession. Sloan-Kettering reported operating income of $110.3 million on revenue of $2.2 billion for the year ended Dec. 31, 2008, the most recent fiscal year available.

Varmus, a Nobel laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health, will remain head of his laboratory within the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and a member of the Sloan-Kettering faculty, according to a news release announcing his decision to step down. Varmus shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with J. Michael Bishop. He was head of the NIH from 1993 to 1999 and joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering in January 2000.

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