Investing in the Future of Medicine: Reid Huber on The Long Run

Today’s guest on the The Long Run is Reid Huber.

He’s a partner at Third Rock Ventures in Boston.

Reid Huber, partner, Third Rock Ventures

Third Rock is known in biotech as one of the venture firms that creates new companies that seek to turn groundbreaking science into new medicines. Since its founding in 2007, Third Rock has put together a portfolio of 62 companies that have collectively created 20 products that have made it all the way through clinical trials and onto the market.

Some of Third Rock’s earliest startup investments have now had time to mature. Agios Pharmaceuticals for cancer and rare diseases, Bluebird Bio in gene therapy, Global Blood Therapeutics for sickle cell disease, Myokardia for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and Sage Therapeutics for the treatment of depression – are a few examples of companies that have done what they said they were going to do. They created new products that help people, and they rewarded investors.

Third Rock is now investing out of a $1.1 billion fund, its sixth. I wrote about it on Timmerman Report in June 2022.

Reid joined Third Rock in 2018 after a long career at Incyte, a developer of drugs for cancer and immune diseases. He’s closely involved in a handful of startups, including companies developing cell therapies for cancer and autoimmunity; one that’s using machine learning for drug discovery; a precision neuroscience drug developer; and another that’s discovering small molecules that form covalent bonds with their molecular targets. And there’s more.

In this conversation, Reid talks about growing up in a middle-class family in central Illinois, how he got introduced to human genetics at an auspicious moment in history, and how he built a career in industry that connected the dots between human genetics and the making of new medicines.

I should also mention that Reid and I first got to know each other on the inaugural Timmerman Traverse for Life Science Cares in 2021 – a hiking trip for biotech executives who give back to fight poverty and support science education and job training in our communities.

Toward the end, we talk about some of the current challenges in the financial and political environment, but also why this is an amazing time of possibility in biotech.  

Now, please join me Reid Huber on The Long Run.