Lag in Biden’s NIH Nominee Creates Tougher Confirmation Scenario

Biomedical research and the NIH check off a lot of firsts for the Biden administration.

One of the first numbers President Joe Biden said he dialed after the election belonged to Francis S. Collins, the longtime director of the National Institutes of Health, to ask him to stay.

One of the first visits he made as president was to the NIH’s sprawling, 310-acre campus in Bethesda, Md., within three weeks of moving into the Oval Office. He returned last December.

The first biomedical innovation center known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, started under his ...