The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche is turning to a prolific American academic scientist to revitalize its lagging research operations.
Dr. John C. Reed, the chief executive of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in San Diego, will become head of Roche’s pharmaceutical research and early development group in April, the company announced Tuesday.
Dr. Reed, 54, has spent 21 years at Sanford-Burnham, formerly known as the Burnham Institute, the last 11 as chief executive.
During his tenure as chief executive, the institute grew rapidly, opened a new research site in Florida, and broadened its role from basic research to also doing drug discovery, in some cases in collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. It also received its largest donation ever, $50 million, from the credit card industry executive T. Denny Sanford, which led the institute to change its name.
Dr. Reed, 54, who holds both a medical degree and a Ph.D., is the author of more than 800 scientific papers, many dealing with why cancer cells do not commit suicide as errant cells are supposed to do. A triathlete, Dr. Reed used to get to his office around 3:30 a.m. each day, though now, with better computers, he works at home in the early hours.
“With his broad scientific and medical background, he is ideally positioned to drive Roche’s strategy of translating a better understanding of disease mechanisms into promising therapeutics,” Severin Schwan, the chief of Roche, said in a statement.
It is not unprecedented for drug companies to tap academic scientists to run research. Sanofi’s research and development is now run by Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and professor at Johns Hopkins. Mark Fishman, a cardiologist at Harvard, was recruited to run research at Novartis, and Peter S. Kim, who heads research at Merck, was previously a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Reed, who has been on biotechnology company boards but never had a full-time corporate job, said in an interview that he was joining Roche to “have an opportunity to contribute on a larger stage, so to speak.”
At Roche he will oversee not only research but also early- and middle-stage clinical trials, something Sanford-Burnham does not do. He will supervise about 2,000 people with an annual budget in the billions, while Sanford-Burnham has about 1,200 people and a budget of around $175 million.
Dr. Reed, who will move to Basel, where Roche is based, said it was too early to discuss his agenda at Roche, other than to make its research more collaborative.
The operation Dr. Reed will run, called Pharma Research and Early Development, or pRED, does not include Genentech, the California biotechnology company that Roche fully acquired in 2009. In an effort to preserve the culture at Genentech, Roche left it autonomous, forming a group it calls gRED.
Recently, gRED has been eclipsing pRED. Roche’s three best-selling drugs, the cancer medicines Rituxan, Herceptin and Avastin, were developed at Genentech. So have some of its most attractive experimental drugs, including T-DM1, a breast cancer drug that could win regulatory approval early this year.
The organization Dr. Reed will run, by contrast, has had its share of problems in recent years. Several hundred researchers were cut in a corporate reorganization. And last year Roche discontinued development of a heart drug after it failed to work in a late-stage clinical trial.
The troubles contributed to Roche’s decision in June to shut its campus in Nutley, N.J., the birthplace of valium. At that time, Jean-Jacques Garaud, head of the Roche unit that Dr. Reed will run, left the company and was replaced on an interim basis by Mike Burgess. Roche said Tuesday that Mr. Burgess would now also leave the company.
Sanford-Burnham said that Dr. Kristiina Vuori, its president and head of its cancer center, would take over as chief executive on an interim basis. Dr. Vuori, who is originally from Finland, has worked closely with Dr. Reed.
M. Wainwright Fishburn Jr., the chairman of Sanford-Burnham, said it was “bittersweet” to see Dr. Reed leave. While the institute will lose a very successful leader, he said, the move could advance the institute’s efforts to get drug discovery work from pharmaceutical companies.
“We have one of our own in one of the most influential positions around,” he said.
