Former Top FDA Official, Forced Out by Kennedy, Lands at Eli Lilly

Dr. Peter Marks, shown in 2021. (GREG NASH/POOL/AFP/Getty Images)

Key Points

• Dr. Peter Marks, former FDA official, has joined Eli Lilly as senior vice president of molecule discovery and head of infectious disease.
• Marks resigned from the FDA in March, saying Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, “wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.” .
• The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that Marks had been told he could resign or be fired.

Dr. Peter Marks, the top Food and Drug Administration official whose forced resignation earlier this year set off a panic among biotech investors, is now an executive at Eli Lilly , the company said on Tuesday.

Marks stepped down as the chief of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research in March. He issued a resignation letter saying that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a prominent vaccine critic, “wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

The Wall Street Journal at the time reported that he had been told he could resign or be fired.

Now, Marks will be Lilly’s senior vice president of molecule discovery and head of infectious disease. His new role was reported earlier Tuesday by the biopharma industry news site Biocentury. Lilly says he started work this month.

Marks was perhaps the best-known career official at the FDA. He served from 2016 until earlier this year as the director of CBER, the division at FDA that regulates vaccines and other complex pharmaceuticals. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he played a major role in Operation Warp Speed, the government effort to fund rapid development and manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines. Later, in 2021, while already running CBER, he also took over direction of the office within CBER responsible for vaccine approval decisions.

Marks’s departure from the FDA earlier this year roiled the biotech industry. He had been seen as generally friendly to biopharma, a proponent of the agency moving quickly to approve medicines for rare diseases. Two influential biotechnology analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald called for the removal of Kennedy after he left.

“RFK Jr. is undermining the trusted leadership of healthcare in this country,” the analysts wrote. “HHS cannot be led by an anti-vax, conspiracy theorist with inadequate training.”

In joining Lilly, Marks is traveling a well-trod path of former top FDA officials taking jobs at the companies they once regulated. In February, Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, who led the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research from 2021 until early 2025, took a job at Pfizer a month after leaving her government position.

Lilly shares were roughly flat on Tuesday. Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger wrote Tuesday that the hiring was good news for the company. “We believe that Dr. Marks can bring significant value to LLY given his tremendous experience and background,” he wrote.

A spokesperson for HHS declined to comment.

Marks told Barron’s in 2021 that he owns a Danish-built sloop named Linnea that he had been fixing up for years, and sailed it in the Chesapeake Bay. “I am very careful about my risk-benefit decisions,” he said at the time. “I did not make them well when I started sailing 30 years ago, and once or twice I got caught in very, very bad weather doing very stupid things.”

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com