Wiley Chambers, MD, retires from FDA, will serve as ophthalmic consultant
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On the morning of Saturday, Jan. 13, Wiley Chambers, MD, drove to his Center for Drug Evaluation and Research office at the FDA.
This was to be the last day of his extraordinary 36-year career at the FDA. He continued to work on pending reviews, cleaned his office, and took a few calls from those making last-minute pleas with the hope that he would stay on, at least for another year or two. On one of those calls, he reminded me that this was not the end of his life or even his career but rather just the end of his time at the FDA. That he was working on his last day at the agency, which happened to fall on the weekend, was no surprise to anyone who knows Dr. Chambers.
Wiley Chambers was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in New England, the son of an ophthalmologist. After 3 years of undergraduate study at Colgate University, he completed medical school, an internship in the hospital in which he was born and ophthalmology residency training at George Washington University (GWU). Given a desire to perhaps stay in D.C. for another year or two, Wiley joined the FDA in 1987, a few months after a previous ophthalmologist working at the agency had left. The rest is history.
In 1938, Congress passed the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which included a set of laws giving authority to the FDA to oversee the safety of food, drugs and cosmetics. From 1938 to 1987, approximately 40 formulations of ophthalmic drugs were approved by the FDA. From 1987 to 2024 during Dr. Chambers’ tenure at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), approximately 100 new ophthalmic drug formulations, including anti-infectives, corticosteroids, and IOP-lowering, anti-allergy and nonsteroidal agents, as well as formulations to treat neovascular age-related macular degeneration and geographic atrophy, among other conditions, were approved.
For his exemplary service, Dr. Chambers received the FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation and the FDA Award of Merit. He was recognized by numerous ophthalmic organizations, receiving the Senior Achievement and two Secretariat Awards from the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Glaucoma Society President’s Award, the Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington Professional Service Award and, most recently, the 2023 Alfred W. Bressler Prize for Excellence in Vision Science presented by the Lighthouse Guild. He delivered the David Worthen Memorial Lecture and the Founder Lecture at the American Society of Retina Specialists among many other keynote addresses and visiting professorships.
One of the remarkable aspects of Dr. Chambers’ journey has been his career-long practice of ophthalmology, including a 3-decade stint at the VA Medical Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia. He has also continued to teach students and residents at his alma mater, GWU, where he has held a faculty position since 1988 and has been a clinical professor of ophthalmology since 2004. Staying actively involved in the care of patients has undoubtedly influenced his strong desire to make safe and effective eye products available in the United States.
Dr. Chambers’ commitment to scientific rigor is legendary. On a personal note, I have thoroughly enjoyed many conversations regarding the science of glaucoma with Wiley and have been most impressed by his fund of knowledge in this subspeciality, all the while finding it amazing that one individual has so much detailed information about every other subspecialty in our profession as well. Throughout his career, which began before email and mobile phones, Wiley has made himself available, at all hours of the day, night and weekend, to answer any questions our community has regarding pharmaceutical product development. In recent years during which we have seen an explosion of biologics including gene and cell therapies, Wiley has provided tremendous guidance to those evaluating submissions to the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and mentored the next generation of ophthalmology officers and leaders. His team at CDER, including William Boyd and Rhea Lloyd among many others, benefited from Wiley’s exemplary leadership. He has also been a strong champion for fairness in how FDA employees are treated, advocating successfully on some occasions for cost-of-living increases, as one example.
While a few investors who bet on novel therapeutic agents do so based upon personal interests in cancer, heart disease or vision problems, most investment is based upon the anticipation of successfully bringing a product to market to provide a return on the investment. Thus, the intellect and commitment of FDA leaders in specific therapeutic areas profoundly influence which projects get funded by the competitive investment community. In 2017, I was pleased to be part of a group led by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and supported by the AAO and other organizations, which met with center director Janet Woodcock, MD, to advocate for the creation of a Division of Ophthalmology at CDER. Dr. Woodcock, a strong supporter of Dr. Chambers, agreed for the need to have an autonomous ophthalmology division. A long lobbying process ultimately resulted in the creation of such a division in 2020 with Wiley Chambers being named the first division director. Coincidentally, Dr. Woodcock also retired from the FDA in January 2024. I sincerely believe that the creation of such an ophthalmology division at CDER, with Wiley as the leader, led to an exponential increase in funding for ophthalmic pharmaceutical innovation, including nine approvals in 2023. The ophthalmology ecosystem understood that if safe and effective products were developed, Dr. Chambers would help get them into the hands of patients.
Dr. Wiley Chambers has had a significant positive impact on the ocular health of U.S. citizens over the past quarter century. I am not aware of any ophthalmic medications that are available only outside of the United States that could meaningfully help patients in our country. The FDA has led the way in ophthalmic pharmaceutical regulation, and this is, in my opinion, primarily due to the great leadership of Dr. Wiley Chambers and the team that he has guided.
We wish Wiley well in the next phase of his career as an ophthalmic consultant in which he will most certainly continue to make a positive impact on our profession in countless ways.
Perspective
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Wiley Chambers, MD, is to me a perfect example of the rare but exemplary servant leader. A servant leader promotes the growth, well-being and development of others rather than only maximizing benefit for themselves and their company or institution. The servant leader is socially conscious, empathetic, committed to the growth of others, of high integrity, honorable and a committed steward of their institution and colleagues. Ophthalmology was blessed to have Dr. Chambers’ service at the FDA for nearly 4 decades. We wish him the best in his next endeavor.
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