Celgene

And af-after a couple of years, I took on additional responsibility to lead translational medicine, and that included early clinical development and the translational biomarkers.

I loved what I was doing at Merck, but I began to miss the relationship to immunology and genetics driving drug discovery, so an opportunity became available at Celgene.

So I moved from Merck to Celgene to lead their immunology and inflammation group.

I should also say, because mentors have been really important to me throughout, that Rupert Vessey had recruited me from academics to Merck.

When he left to Celgene, I followed him after a couple of years, so moved to Celgene, large part because of Rupert, but also because of the work that Celgene was doing.

And then after a couple of years, BMS acquired Celgene, so moved to BMS by way of the acquisition.

And over the last seven years now, I've had a couple of different roles, most recently to lead the research organization, so that's now across all therapeutic areas, across all modalities, delivering INDs into the clinic, and then all the translational and wet lab work, clinical pharmacology to support clinical development.

So started kind of with injuries, orthopedic surgery, got really excited about genetics, and that's been a North Star for me because we think a lot about genetics and drug discovery, and then we can talk about how those principles have broadened over time.

making the transition to big biotech.

So they've always been, you know, I guess Genentech was the first and there was Celgene and Gilead.

And, you know, we've had a few, but really it's most of them, many of them get taken out.

It's very rarefied air.

Yeah.

Um, so I know you had stints, um, at Shire and Celgene early on.

Tell us about, like, w- how did that come about, right? Was it a kind of formal program? Was it, you know, you answered, right, uh, you know, posting...

Uh, what, what were those early roles? 'Cause that, that, I think that's important to establish your foundational operational exposure, uh, for the industry.

I spent...

Actually, a predecessor company called Jerini, uh, which was acquired by Shire, uh, was one of the first drugs to be launched in HAE, um, and spent a total of, you know, seven years supporting, uh, uh, Catabance, which is their bradykinin inhibitor, uh, uh, receptor blocker.

Um, so yes, uh, really a decade in the field, uh, as a, as a sales rep and as a MSL, uh, before going in-house, um, to Celgene, uh, where I supported the medical affairs training.

training.So I, uh, we may have talked about this.

And now let me give you a few examples, right? Let's consider Merck and Keytruda, which we talked about earlier.

There's also BMS's $74 billion acquisition of Celgene, which was one of the largest pharma deals in history.

And AbbVie spent years diversifying around Humira's inevitable biosimilar competition.

which included the $63 billion acquisition of Allergan.