In interviews with STAT, White House aides and outside research experts worried that the scandal will delay or undercut several of the administration’s key scientific priorities: appointing a new biomedical research chief; relaunching the “Cancer Moonshot”; retooling federal pandemic preparedness; and creating a new agency geared toward biomedical breakthroughs…

The resignation is a major blow to the Biden administration’s broader scientific agenda, which is already floundering. The National Institutes of Health is currently without a director. Even Senate Democrats have yet to rally behind Robert Califf, Biden’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Increasingly, there are questions about whether health secretary Xavier Becerra is a player in either process, or in the federal pandemic response.

And Lander was an uncommonly central player in Biden’s life sciences ambitions. His appointment in itself was historic: He is the first White House science adviser to sit in the president’s Cabinet; the first from a life sciences background; and the first to create an entire wing of OSTP devoted to biology, medicine, and human health.