Jane Henney was born in
Woodburn, Indiana. She received her undergraduate training at
Manchester University, an MD degree from
Indiana University School of Medicine and did postgraduate work at the
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in
Houston. Trained as a medical
oncologist, she joined the
National Cancer Institute at the
National Institutes of Health in 1976, working in the Cancer Therapy and Evaluation Program. Prior to her appointment as commissioner, Henney had worked at the FDA from 1992 to 1994 as deputy commissioner for operations under then-commissioner
David Aaron Kessler, and then at the
University of New Mexico, where she was vice president of the health sciences center. After leaving the FDA she joined the board of directors of the pharmaceutical company
AstraZeneca. A significant and far reaching decision by the FDA under her tenure, was the ban on supplements and natural products that contain
lovastatin, effectively handing exclusivity of cholesterol lowering compounds to pharmaceutical companies.
AstraZeneca benefited directly from this decision this removed a cheap, natural product, from competing with their own statin
rosuvastatin. She was named senior vice president and provost for health affairs at the
University of Cincinnati in 2003. In 2012, she was appointed to the Board of Directors of Cubist Pharmaceuticals. ==References==