By John Miller
ZURICH, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Pharmaceuticals giant Novartis
NOVN.VX is pinning its hopes on a 43-year-old Harvard cancer
research star to help fill gaps in its immuno-oncology arsenal
after "missing the boat" on some promising therapies.
James "Jay" Bradner, from Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute, will head Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research
starting on March 1. He will replace Mark Fishman, who is
retiring after leading Novartis research in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, for 13 years.
Under Fishman, Novartis successfully broadened its drug
pipeline as its scientists shifted their focus to understanding
disease, rather than merely unleashing batteries of chemicals on
a target in hopes of finding one that works. In "CART therapy,"
it is a leader in supercharging T cells to find and kill cancer.
But the Basel-based company also failed to keep pace with
Merck (N:MRK) MRCG.DE , Bristol-Myers BMY.N and archrival Roche
ROG.VX on "checkpoint inhibitors" against slippery tumours
that hide from the immune system, a market worth tens of
billions.
"They completely missed the boat," said Michael Nawrath, a
Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst. "Jay Bradner may come from
Dana-Farber, but his pedigree is that of somebody who knows how
you take new scientific developments and commercialise them, and
how you collaborate."
Bradner, on Dana-Farber's blood cancer staff, has helped
launch several start-ups aiming to commercialise his lab's
discoveries, giving Novartis hope that it has landed a research
boss who combines business acumen with the scientific skills to
help it regain lost ground.
In U.S. research circles, Bradner has star status.
A "TED Talk" he gave in Boston in 2011 where he made the
case for more industry and academic collaboration to speed drug
discovery has been viewed more than 466,000 times. In it, he
champions his lab's decision to share a formula for a promising
molecule with dozens of others.
"A DARK ART"
"What would a drug company do at this point? Well, they
probably would keep this a secret," Bradner told the audience.
"We did just the opposite. We gave the world the chemical
identity of this molecule."
In a 2012 Atlantic Monthly article, he labeled drug
discovery "a dark art performed behind closed doors with the
shades pulled".
Analysts said this contrarian approach could be just what is
needed at Novartis, where Bradner will oversee 6,000 doctors,
researchers and staff in the United States, Switzerland and
Asia.
"If he's controversial, questioning what 'Big Pharma' does,
then all the better," said Fabian Wenner, a Kepler Cheuvreux
analyst. "That can only benefit Novartis going into the next
decade where we're going to be looking at much more concentrated
payer power and pricing pressures."
Chief Executive Joe Jimenez hinted in October that Bradner's
"open-source approach," borrowed from the software industry, was
one reason he was hired.
"He's very ... agnostic as to where a technology rests,
whether it's in academia or in another company or in our
company," Jimenez said. "So you could see a much more open view
of where we're going to source new technologies."
Fishman, a cardiologist paid about $8 million annually, has
led Novartis's push into CART therapy, which extracts immune
system T cells from patients, re-engineers them to spot and
destroy cancer cells, and infuses them back.
Novartis aims for 2017 approval, initially for the deadly
blood cancer lymphoblastic leukaemia.
Still, it lags rivals armed with PD-1 and PD-L1 checkpoint
inhibitors to fight tumours that evade the body's natural
defenses. Merck's Keytruda is on the market, as is
Bristol-Myers' Opdivo, while Roche aims for approval in 2016.
Pfizer PFE.N and AstraZeneca AZN.L are also pursuing
compounds.
Novartis declined to make Bradner or Fishman available for
this article.
(Editing by Estelle Shirbon)