Mr. Brown: Cellzome started as a spin-out from the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg. In fact it was the first ever Biotech spin-out from EMBL. It was founded on world leading expertise in proteomics and a technology for mapping the biochemical components of disease pathways. The company made the very first complete map of the full biochemical pathways (the proteome) of a whole organism. It was published in Nature, January 2002 as the front cover story. Towards the end of 2001 the company bought assets from GlaxoSmithKline and started to build a drug discovery organization in the U.K., to capitalize on the proteomics platform. In 2002 they recruited me to lead the company towards being a fully-fledged drug discovery and development company. We have some world-leading research in Alzheimer’s disease based on the proteomics platform and we are now exploiting this by applying chemistry to optimize lead molecules. The proteomics capability that led to these projects is actually useful in any disease area and we have the capability to map the key proteins in all major human diseases to identify the best targets for discovery of new medicines.
TWST: How did you get into biotech from drug discovery?
Mr. Brown: I've 28 years experience with big pharma, having worked for four of the top 10 pharma companies, Zeneca, Pfizer, Glaxo and finally Roche. At Pfizer I was named co-inventor on the patent of Viagra and I led the project through to Phase 2 clinical trials. At Roche I was Global Head of Drug Discovery, responsible for the productivity of 2000 scientists over 5 research sites. When I came across Cellzome I saw a very special biotech, with a particularly powerful technology platform that can repeatedly generate new drug discovery projects. I liked the challenge of using that to produce medicines to help sick people.
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