FDA says COVID-19 aided CGT recruitment

The FDA said an unintentional consequence of the pandemic was it helped the organization recruit in the cell and gene therapy (CGT) space.  

Peter Marks, the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told the audience at the BIO International Convention in Boston, Massachusetts last week an “unintentional consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it helped us to recruit in the CGT space.”

The organization began assessing its hiring and retention activity long before COVID-19 in November 2017. And in December 2021, the FDA published its Final Hiring and Retention Assessment Report after first investigating the matter. The FDA highlighted hiring and talent recruitment and retention as one of the most “important organizational challenges” and said it “has made considerable strides in its recruiting, hiring, and retention functions since the November 2017 publication of the Initial Assessment report.”

Peter Marks speaking virtually at BIO, Boston. Image c/o Millie Nelson

While COVID-19 clearly put a lot of pressure on the FDA as “operational functions needed to quickly pivot procedures and guidelines to help the workforce balance their professional commitments with health, safety, and other personal needs,” it also brought about positive consequences too.

Marks said COVID-19 enabled the organization to do something “we haven’t been able to do before,” and pointed out it is not just CGT recruitment it supported but also “vaccines because in certain situations you can [implement] fully remote work.”

With COVID-19 propelling the organization “to perform most of its operations virtually,” the FDA shifted “to a maximum-telework policy for FDA staff, the transition to all-virtual recruiting and hiring processes, and the implementation of temporary COVID-related hiring authorities fundamentally altered FDA’s recruiting, hiring, and retention functions. While these new programs and innovations were largely unplanned and provisional, they also served as a test environment to demonstrate how FDA could operate using completely new ways of working.”

Now we enter a post-pandemic world, Marks said it is “important work is getting done and we are hiring up to where we need to get to” he made it clear that “we are not there yet with CGT, but we have made progress.”

Marks praised the increase of remote working and said it is “good for hiring because there is a lot of work that is desk-based.” However, “the lack of in-person meetings is a problem for the industry.” He said that looking forward he is unable to say “where things are going to settle” with regard to in-person and remote working but reaffirmed progress has been made.