Trump Taps White House Veteran Sara Brenner as Acting FDA Chief

The Trump administration tapped Sara Brenner, a career FDA official, to serve as the acting commissioner of the agency.

Brenner’s selection to lead the Food and Drug Administration was posted Friday on the agency’s leadership web page. Her role comes as the agency awaits Senate confirmation nomination of President Donald Trump’s pick for agency commissioner, Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary.

Brenner served as the chief medical officer for in vitro diagnostics at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, where she advised leadership on regulatory premarket and post-market compliance and surveillance, as well as broader initiatives to promote public health across the medical technology landscape.

She’s a veteran of the first Trump administration, during which she served as the senior policy adviser for health and biomedical innovation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2018 to 2019.

She also worked at the US Department of Health and Human Services, where she served as a leader in the Covid-19 response operations for diagnostic data.

Brenner did not respond to immediate request for comment.

The FDA declined to comment, citing the Trump administration’s restrictions on communicating with the public about health topics during the presidential transition.