Gottlieb is likely to be confirmed by the full Senate when he eventually gets a vote. His comments to the committee Wednesday seemed to assuage concerns by some senators on the drug crisis as well as other issues, including potential conflicts of interest that come from his work as a consultant and investor.

Number of hats

A former FDA staffer who left the agency to work in the business world, Gottlieb also faced questions on his ties to health-care companies. Financial disclosure forms show he earned millions of dollars from various investment banks and pharmaceutical firms last year and in the first part of this year, including $1.85 million for his work as a managing director at T.R. Winston & Co., an investment bank that raised money for a number of public companies.

“You do wear an extraordinary number of hats,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.

Gottlieb replied that at the FDA, he would be guided by science. If confirmed, he would resign from T.R. Winston, divest interests in more than a dozen companies and temporarily recuse himself from making decisions on at least 20 more where he has financial interests or was paid consulting fees, including GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

“The lives and the futures of families like mine are affected by the decisions made by the FDA,” Gottlieb, whose wife, children and parents were at the hearing, said in his opening statement. He pledged to make sure “the FDA puts their interests first in everything we do.”

Drug prices

Gottlieb has previously spoken about lowering drug prices, a Trump priority, by speeding approval of generic drugs. He’s particularly focused on complex medications that combine old drugs with newer delivery devices, as well as those with unusually complicated formulations.

In his prepared remarks, Gottlieb urged rejection of what he called a “false dichotomy that it all boils down to a choice between speed and safety.” Instead, he wrote, if the FDA leverages new technology and better science it can improve efficiency and safety “and also remain faithful to FDA’s gold standard for regulatory conduct.”

Gottlieb, 44, served as a deputy FDA commissioner from 2005 to 2007. He hasn’t faced the same criticism from Democrats that other Trump administration choices have, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch.

In addition to his consulting and investment work since leaving the agency, Gottlieb has also been a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank. He was trained as a physician and completed his residency in internal medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York after graduating from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1999. He earned a degree in economics from Wesleyan University in 1994.

Copyright 2018 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.