Running and Science: The Perfect Match

I love long distance running. Really long. I’ve run up to 100 miles. It’s a deeply satisfying feeling crossing the finish line after staying [mostly] on course and overcoming the manifold challenges of such races.

My interest in running is not unlike my passion for drug discovery. Studying disease and advancing novel medicines requires resilience and is a journey I have been proud to pursue for nearly three decades. Like ultrarunning, which invariably includes mountains, technical trails, and prehensile tree roots along the way, prosecuting science is not a straight line either. As a scientist and drug discoverer, I’ve always believed that by following an iterative path of scientific innovation, we can either avoid or conquer obstacles and ultimately find new therapies that improve patient lives.

The starting line for me in the race against disease began in my undergraduate and graduate studies in veterinary medicine and pathology, followed by post-doctoral work in the fields of immunology and inflammation. My desire was to pursue scientific and clinical research in novel areas of drug discovery targeted at addressing unmet medical needs across a broad array of diseases. This focus brought me to Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) where over the course of my tenure there and its legacy companies, I helped bring more than 200 drug candidates to clinical trials and over 13 FDA-approved drugs to patients.

While I am proud of my scientific acumen and contributions to the important work that made these milestones possible, I am equally proud of my leadership accomplishments creating and building teams. You don’t reach the finish line in bringing approved therapies to patients without the dedicated contributions of many bright-minded scientists, all running together and aligned towards a common goal.

That’s why I’m so excited about the extraordinary opportunity I now have as Chief Scientific Officer at Biohaven. Although I am a newcomer to Biohaven’s ongoing journey to transform the treatment of neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases, I feel right at home at a company where science rules, patients are the focus of all we do, and our mantra is “every day matters.”

The opportunity to build a world-class drug discovery team that seamlessly complements Biohaven’s proven late-stage clinical development expertise tailors perfectly with my experience base. In this new and challenging race, I am fortunate to be wearing a Biohaven jersey. In the early 2010s, most Big Pharma companies left neuroscience drug discovery and development, but as a deeply innovative drug hunting team, Biohaven is well-equipped to fill this void and advance medicines to patients.?The accelerated development and registration of Nurtec? ODT (rimegepant) for migraine is a legacy in drug development of which any large pharma would be envious. In fact, many of the scientists at Biohaven and myself worked on the discovery of this drug in its early days.

As I write this post from my office in Biohaven’s newly-opened Cambridge, MA research laboratories, there is real-time evidence that we’re off to a running start in pursuing a key pillar of our success: building and refining an industry-leading neuroscience drug discovery organization. We are integrating our scientific teams across three strategically located hubs – here in Cambridge as well as in Pittsburgh, PA, and New Haven, CT – each of which are carrying the torch in our efforts to identify innovative therapeutic candidates that have potential to be first-in-class or best-in-class treatments. IND-enabling studies are already underway with novel, differentiated agents such as our Kv7 activator for epilepsy as well as drug candidates for pain and immune indications.?

Running competition is the perfect metaphor for my career as a scientist. It has taught me a lot about dedication, keeping my focus forward, and pursuing important goals not because they are easy, but because they are challenging, complex, and ultimately highly rewarding. ?These are all important lessons that I hope to bring to the new course I am on at Biohaven. ?