Building a Cancer R&D Engine To Last: David Schenkein on The Long Run

Today’s guest on The Long Run podcast is David Schenkein. He’s the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Agios Pharmaceuticals.

Agios was founded a decade ago on the then-provocative idea of fighting cancer via new understanding of metabolic pathways that get hijacked by cancer cells. The company has grown up quite a bit since. It went from concept to new chemical entities to clinical trials to a drug on the US market in something akin to warp speed in biotech – 10 years. The company’s second drug candidate – a molecule it owns completely on its own — is now under review at the FDA for the treatment of a form of acute myeloid leukemia. In a world of short-term gains and desire for the quick flip, Schenkein is unflinching in his desire to build another productive and lasting cancer R&D group, like Genentech.

David Schenkein, CEO, Agios Pharmaceuticals

Schenkein also has an interesting personal story. While most outsiders think biotech is nothing but eggheads from Harvard and Stanford doing stuff only they can understand, here’s a guy who went to a no-name school, and went further than most of the kids with perfect test scores. As my friend Ben Fidler at Xconomy, in a profile a few years ago, wrote: “David Schenkein is a kid from Queens. An underdog. The kid who barely eked his way into medical school.”

How did the underdog win? What is Agios doing to deliver the goods for patients over and over, to develop truly enduring drug discovery and development mojo? There’s a story here.

Before you hit ‘play’ I’d like to thank the sponsors of the The Long Run: Presage Biosciences and EBD Group.

Check out Presage Biosciences and its intratumoral microdosing approach to testing experimental cancer drugs. To learn more, go to presagebio.com.

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Now, join me and David Schenkein for The Long Run.