Nobel Laureate Seen as NIH Chief : Science: Some view Clinton Administration’s choice of UC San Francisco researcher Harold Varmus as an attempt to bolster the health agency’s reputation.

A Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist at UC San Francisco, Dr. Harold E. Varmus, is expected to be named the new director of the National Institutes of Health, Clinton Administration sources said Wednesday.

Officially, Varmus and one other candidate are undergoing final vetting for the position, but sources in Washington said that Varmus has been offered the job and has accepted.

Varmus was the co-winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology with Dr. J. Michael Bishop of UC San Francisco for the discovery of oncogenes, genes that cause cancer.

He will be the first Nobel laureate to be named head of the prestigious NIH, where most of the government’s health and biological research is conducted, and arguably the best-known scientist ever to hold the post.

Most previous NIH directors, such as Dr. Bernadine Healy, who resigned from the post effective June 30, have been noted more for their administrative abilities than for their scientific prowess. The appointment of Varmus is viewed by some as an attempt to re-establish NIH as a scientifically solid institution and free it from the political imbroglios that dogged it during the Reagan and Bush years.

The change in direction reflects the Clinton Administration’s break with precedent by consulting widely within the scientific community during its search for a director. “That allowed people who understand the scientific community to find the right person, which has certainly not been the protocol in the past,” Bishop said. “It’s a fabulous appointment.”

Varmus is on vacation in London and could not be reached.

The NIH, with a 1993 budget of $11.6 billion, is widely viewed as the best biomedical research institution in the world. But it has been embroiled in controversy recently because of such problems as the ban on fetal tissue research initiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and the government’s failure to undertake research on the abortion drug RU 486.

The institutes have also suffered from a brain drain of their best scientists because of government regulations that prohibit federal employees from benefiting financially from the fruits of their research.

Largely because of such controversies, the NIH was headed by an acting director for 18 months during the George Bush Administration. Several prominent scientists are said to have turned down the director’s post before the Clinton Administration settled on Varmus.

“There is a bit of re-crafting to be done in the directorship, in the relation between NIH and the federal government,” Bishop said. “ . . . Harold has the intellect and force of will to get these things done.”

“I think it’s great,” added molecular biologist Peter Vogt of the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation. “We need scientific leadership of that distinction. . . . The entire biomedical research community will applaud it.”

Varmus, 53, is a medical doctor who also holds a master’s degree in 17th-Century literature. He and Bishop gained recognition, as well as many prestigious awards, for their cancer studies, which began with research on tumors in chickens. They discovered that certain genes in healthy cells, called oncogenes, can be activated by chemicals and viruses to cause cancer.

That research triggered an immense outpouring of new discoveries in the genetics of cancer that has led to new ways of detecting the disease and to innovative treatments, including gene therapy.

In recent years, Varmus’ research interests have become more diverse. In addition to trying to figure out how cancer genes work, he has studied the mechanisms by which retroviruses, including the virus that causes AIDS, replicate and insert their genes into infected cells. His work there may eventually lead to new therapies for AIDS, experts said.

Varmus has also worked on the molecular biology of development in mice, exploring the manner in which genes are turned on and off during the growth of mice from eggs. “He has diverse, almost catholic, scientific interests in biomedical research,” Bishop said.

Varmus has told friends that he plans to establish a small laboratory at the NIH to continue his research, and will maintain his facilities at UC San Francisco.