Can you give us an overview of your professional background and what brought you to Servier?

I’m trained as a biologist. I received my PhD at Cornell University and then moved on to studying cancer, genetics and genomics at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. (I’ve lived in Boston about 25 years now and consider myself a Bostonian.)

I then spent about 14 years at Novartis, where I worked on cancer drug discovery. I had a great experience working on many programs, four of which are now FDA approved products bringing benefit to patients, which is always satisfying and rewarding. I still follow and root for all the projects I’ve worked on. Some still stand a chance of getting approval to help patients), I’m always hoping they do.

After Novartis, I did a sabbatical at the Broad Institute, where I used large data sets and some machine learning to identify new targets and innovative approaches to drugging very difficult targets.

From the Broad Institute, I went to a small startup, Cedilla Therapeutics. I was recruited by one of my former mentors, Bill Kaelin, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2019, and we worked on that project for almost four years.

Before it dissolved, I was contacted by Servier to see if I would be interested in a role leading the U.S. research team, and I decided to join the team for a couple reasons. One reason was that I knew the folks at Servier in Paris, we had a collaboration where I spent four years working with the Servier team on a handful of projects, one of which was just dosed in patients a few months ago for the first time, so that was a real full circle moment and I’m really rooting for that project.

I joined Servier 4 years ago, and that gets me to today, where I am now leading the U.S. research team, still working on cancer drug discovery and trying to find new medicines for cancer patients. It’s a really fantastic, talented team and it’s a real privilege to work with them.

Who or what would you say inspired your career in drug discovery?

A couple people come to mind. One person in particular is Bill Sellers. William Sellers was the head of oncology research and early clinical development at Novartis for 10 years and he was a mentor of mine in drug discovery. He was just very inspiring in in the way that he prioritized patient needs while doing rigorous science that addresses those patient needs. It’s very motivating to work every day with a sense of urgency because you’re trying to meet those patient needs. And I try to convey that to my team as well, to pay it forward. I really learned a lot from him and to this day, I ask “what would Bill do?”

He’s one of two important Bills in my in my career, Bill Kaelin was the other, who was the Nobel Prize winner and who was a mentor to me at Cedilla Therapeutics.

What is one challenge that you are working to tackle right now?

One that I can mention briefly is that we’re trying to move forward with additional research to help glioma patients. Our breakthrough medicine for IDH-mutated glioma has the potential to help patients for which it is indicated, but the research for glioma patients has to continue.

We are striving to build upon the success of that medicine. To that end, we have a research program in glioma to understand what additional new targets and or new medicines may bring these patients new options. We have projects in our research pipeline that could potentially address this need, and we continue to dedicate our efforts there.

What is the best thing about your job? What excites you about the work?

The mission and the people really motivate me the most. We come to work every day knowing that the work we’re doing is to bring benefit to patients who need it. The team is extraordinarily talented and accomplished and truly makes me bring my best to work every day. Because they challenge me, it ultimately makes us all work harder and faster to bring new medicines to patients.

From your perspective, what makes Servier unique?

One thing, in my opinion that makes Servier unique is its governance structure. I can feel this in my day-to-day work because we work on some things that some pharma organizations would not work on because they may not be thought to be as commercially viable.

One example of this is that Servier is now evaluating one of our medicines in chondrosarcoma, a very rare small disease. That’s not something most pharmaceutical companies would have done, because it’s not considered profitable, and I really appreciate that Servier is willing to work on some things that will have transformative benefit for patients, but not necessarily that would look commercially attractive to investors. Thankfully, we do not have to worry about that.

We know you have earned a very long list of remarkable career accomplishments. What motivates you to keep pushing for more?

It’s the patient that inspires the work that we do. And we’re not there yet, right?

We have made some amazing advances. Our glioma medicine is really changing the treatment landscape in IDH-mutated glioma, but we haven’t found a cure yet. The work that we do every day will hopefully build upon the success that we’ve achieved thus far. We’re trying to discover additional innovative medicines that will lead to cures.

Looking back, what advice would you give yourself at the start of your research career?

I would reinforce the fact that the mission and the people are the most important things to consider when building your career. Who you work with is so important for many reasons. You will learn from them, yes, but you also spend a lot of time with the people you work with, and so you should enjoy that time.

It’s a significant fraction of your life, and my advice would be to seek out places where you will get to work with people that you respect and that you enjoy spending time with on an important mission that really motivates you.

That would be my advice to my younger self and it’s advice I give to my team here regularly. When we hire new people, I remind them this is the most important decision that they’re going to have to make, deciding who to work with, and that’s fundamentally important.

What are you most proud of in your career?

The people that I have had a chance to mentor over the years. I’m so proud to see them be so successful in the field.

I see them out in the ecosystem, they’re not in the same labs anymore and some of them have left Servier, but I’m so proud of the work they do and what they’re doing and how they do it.

What do you do in your free time when you get free time?

I like to spend time outdoors. I have a cottage in Maine, and my partner and I like to spend time there together hiking, biking, sea kayaking, and disconnecting from the internet, reading books and getting some downtime.