From Bedside to Biotech: Why I Left the Practice of Medicine to Make Medicines

What if – instead of helping one person at a time – I could help thousands? This is the question that weighed heavily on my mind as I considered taking a job at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, a little-known biotech company focused on making cancer drugs based on a new concept called personalized medicine. It was 2000, and for nearly 20 years I had worked as a hematologist at Tufts Medical Center, treating people with cancer using the limited tools available and working on clinical trials in hopes of shepherding new therapies to my patients. While it was fulfilling to witness people recover or at least gain a better quality of life using approved or investigational medicines, I was increasingly frustrated with the lack of options. For many, I was treating their disease in 2000 the same way I would have in the 80’s.

At the time, Millennium was testing bortezomib (now VELCADE?) in Phase 1 clinical trials for multiple myeloma, a terrible disease with a survival rate of less than three years, and I had been asked to run the cancer clinical development group at the company. The science was strong, and I believed in the vision of the leadership team, but I loved being a physician and felt a deep loyalty to my patients.

I was close to making my decision to leave full-time clinical practice, when I had a conversation with one of my patients – a young woman named Nancy with multiple myeloma – that would become one of the defining moments in my career. Nancy had already completed chemotherapy and received a bone marrow transplant from her sister, and she was once again in relapse when I told her about my plans to work on the bortezomib program. Though she was upset about the prospect of losing her doctor, she said, “if you’re leaving, you better develop this drug in time for me to use it, and you have to make sure it allows me to get old enough that my daughters remember who I am when I die.” Her request was personal, but for me, it reinforced the monumental impact a new treatment option can make for people like Nancy who are out of options, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I joined Millennium, and bortezomib was approved by the FDA in May 2003. Nancy became one of the very first patients in Massachusetts to receive it, and she went into a complete remission and lived another 6-7 years on bortezomib and other novel medicines. While she was in remission, I received a holiday card from Nancy with a picture of the family, including her two daughters, expressing her gratitude for the years bortezomib gave her and sharing how much her daughters knew about her. Importantly, bortezomib went on to extend lives of thousands of multiple myeloma patients around the globe.

I share this story and that postcard with employees often because it is a powerful reminder of why we come to work everyday – to give thousands of people like Nancy renewed hope and more time by creating new and better treatment options for cancer. When things get hard, when teams face daunting challenges, when progress seems unreachable, I encourage myself and my team to reconnect with these moments that remind us of the importance of our work and the people who are waiting on us.