FDA Opens Nominations for Two New Tobacco Advisory Committee Seats

The Food and Drug Administration has opened a call for nominations to fill two vacancies on its Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, the standing body it relies on for independent scientific advice on tobacco and nicotine products.

Nominations are due by December 14. Candidates, the agency said, should bring expertise in the fields that bear most heavily on the committee's work, with oncology and toxicology cited among the disciplines it is looking for. Nominations are accepted on a continuing basis, and the agency has said it will consider them against current and future vacancies as they come up.

The committee's composition matters because of what it reviews. TPSAC advises the agency on the scientific underpinnings of its decisions on products spanning e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches, and its members are expected to read complex study results and weigh public-health significance without conflicts of interest. The agency has said it will ask candidates to disclose financial holdings, employment, and research funding for that purpose.

In a separate step, the FDA announced four new voting members across its advisory structures, and the addition includes experts with backgrounds in cessation and in harm reduction, two of the areas where the agency's tobacco work is most contested. The pairing of new experts with the open TPSAC seats signals that the agency is rebuilding the advisory layer it draws on when it makes product-level calls.

The December 14 date gives the nomination process a defined window before the next set of vacancies, and it puts the committee's composition, and the balance it will bring to the scientific questions ahead, on a set timeline.