This post has been updated to correct the spelling of NantWorks.
Additional names have been thrown out the next director of the National Institutes of Health. According to Nature News, President-elect Donald Trump is also considering NantWorks CEO Patrick Soon-Shiong, Geoffrey Ling, the former biotech director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, and Stanford University's John Ioannidis.
Last week, current NIH Director Francis Collins and Representative Andy Harris (R-Md.) both met with Trump in what was thought to be a sort of job interview.
Nature News adds that Soon-Shiong has also met with the President-elect. As FierceBiotech notes, Soon-Shiong, a former surgeon, is best known for developing the cancer drug Abraxane and then selling the drug and the company, Abraxis, that made it to Celgene for $2.9 billion. He's also advised current Vice President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot initiative and launched his own similarly named Cancer Moonshot 2020 program. Nature News adds that Soon-Shiong might also be under consideration for the science advisor slot.
Ling has met with the transition team and says that as director, he'd boost the agency's involvement with the private sector, especially start-ups.
Ioannidis, who is known for his work on reproducibility in science, tells Nature News that the transition team hasn't approached him. "If they call, my first priority would be to make sure there are no strings attached in promoting any anti-science ideas," he says.