John Reed says his decision to resign as CEO of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute was not planned—but came about with an offer to join the Swiss pharmaceutical giant—and he cited both personal and professional reasons for leaving the San Diego institute.
The Sanford-Burnham, which Reed joined 21 years ago as a rising star in cancer research, announced his departure yesterday. He is moving to Basel, Switzerland, in April to become the Head of Roche Pharma Research and Early Development.
“It’s an incredible opportunity and one of the biggest jobs in pharma,” Reed said in a phone interview. Roche is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, with more than 80,000 employees and over $45 billion in annual revenue. At Pharma Research and Early Development, Reed will oversee about 2,000 employees in Roche labs in Basel, Germany, Singapore, Shanghai, London, and New York. Perhaps more importantly, Reed said Roche is one of the first big pharmas to embrace personalized medicine early on. As he put it, “All of us see this [coming] era of personalized medicine as the next frontier.”
Reed said he also had personal reasons in making the move. He was named as the institute’s president and CEO in 2002, and now, after 11 years, he and his wife are empty nesters and ready to take on something new. The Sanford-Burnham has just completed a very successful 10-year plan that doubled the institute’s size, which he described at length for Xconomy in August. “We’re turning the page and getting ready to begin a new chapter,” he said, “and I feel very confident about the stature of the institute at this time.”
Although federal funding is under pressure and research grants from the National Institutes of Health have been declining for everyone, Reed said it’s been less of a concern at the Sanford-Burnham “because we have been able to diversify” with research funding from pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Takeda. “We actually had our best year ever in 2012,” Reed said, “with $110 million in grants and contracts. Of course, less of that was coming from the NIH than in the past.”
Reed acknowledged that the drug research and development division he is joining “went through a pretty rough consolidation.” Roche shut down its campus in Nutley, NJ, and laid off hundreds of scientists in a global reorganization. But he said, “From my perspective, the
