Dr. Frank M. Torti, who on Friday was named vice president for health affairs at the University of Connecticut Health Center, said he was drawn to UConn partly by the potential for Connecticut to become a bioscience leader.

"There's an excitement in focusing around this bioscience initiative, and it's the sort of challenge that we'll be a part of at the UConn Health Center," Torti said. He specifically cited Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's plan to boost bioscience and the university's partnership with Jackson Labs, a Maine-based mammalian genetic research lab.

Torti's appointment takes effect May 1.

"Frank Torti is a brilliant researcher, physician and teacher — a transformational leader who will make UConn one of the premier institutions of health care in the world," UConn President Susan Herbst said in a statement released by the university.

Torti currently works at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where he is vice president for strategic programs, director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, and chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology. He has also served as a chief scientist and acting commissioner of theU.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Torti's base salary will be $780,000 with a possible $150,000 performance incentive at the end of his first year at UConn. His predecessor, Dr. Cato Laurencin, received similar compensation.

After Laurencin stepped down as vice president of health affairs and dean of the medical school, the university began a national search for his replacement in July.

If there was anything on his resume that helped him edge any other candidates for the position, Torti said, it might have been experience with the FDA. Many academics and scientists are good with the creation of new drugs, he said, but negotiating the often convoluted maze toward approval is another matter.

"A lot of people don't realize that many drugs fail not because they aren't good drugs, but because people don't understand the regulatory path," said Tort. "I can bring that to the table."

In the next few years, Torti said, the medical community will increasingly understand that "we ought not be satisfied with the same drugs and treatments of the 20th century." Instead, he said, as genetics technology advances, it will focus more on personalized medicine.

"I think [UConn] will be the national leaders in this area," he said.

Among the medical organizations that Torti serves on, or has served on, include the Cancer Biology Training Consortium, North Carolina's Drug Discovery Center of Innovation's Scientific Advisory Board, the Association of American Cancer Institutes and of the National Coalition for Cancer Research, the National Institutes of Health Council for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the National Cancer Institute's Clinical Trial Advisory Committee and the Board of Scientific Advisors

Torti received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Johns Hopkins University in 1979, his doctor of medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1974, and his masters in public health in 1973 from the Harvard School of Public Health. In the mid-1970s, he was an intern and resident at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

Torti's wife, Suzy V. Torti, is a cancer researcher and has been hired as a professor in the UConn School of Medicine. She currently teaches at the Department of Biochemistry at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

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UConn Appoints New Health Center Leader