June 20, 2011 - IMM@BUCT

COVER STORYTARGACEPTMOVING FORWARDTargacept willcontinue thedevelopment ofa drug previouslypartnered withAstraZeneca.AFTER THE BREAKUPThe end of a PARTNERSHIP WITH BIG PHARMA brings bothopportunity and challenge for biotech firmsLISA M. JARVIS , C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAUMICHAEL M. MORRISSEY hit the roadlast summer charged with one of the mostdaunting tasks in his career: to convinceinvestors and analysts to keep the faith inExelixis, the South San Francisco-basedbiotechnology company he suddenly foundhimself leading. Within a span of 10 days,two major events had rocked the firm: Itsmost lucrative partnership, a licensing dealwith Bristol-Myers Squibb for the cancerdrug XL184, had dissolved after BMS shiftedstrategy, and its chief executive officer,George A. Scangos, had abruptly left tohead up Biogen Idec.Morrissey, previously the head of R&D atExelixis, was tapped to succeed Scangos. Forhis first task, the lanky Midwestern chemisthad to find just the right tone—a mixtureof honesty, humility, and confidence—tokeep investors interested in the company.He needed to show them he had a plan tonavigate Exelixis through choppy waters.“My line was basically, ‘Look, BMS walkingaway and the CEO leaving doesn’t lookgood. We’re not going to try to sugarcoatthat,’ ” Morrissey recalls with a chuckle.What he could offer was reassurance thatExelixis was still focused on bringing tomarket what he considered to be an extraordinarilypromising drug.But at the time Exelixis had little concretedata to support that claim. At the 2010American Society of Clinical Oncology(ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago—theSuper Bowl of cancer conferences—thecompany presented evidence of a dramaticresponse in a single prostate cancer patientin a small clinical trial of XL184, now calledcabozantinib. The patient’s tumors hadshrunk by more than 40%, and there weresigns of improvement in his bone scan, a wayof measuring whether the cancer had spread.“All we could do is show that one slide,with the one patient, and say, ‘We’re goingto take this momentum and build uponit,’ ” Morrissey says.And build upon it they did. Just a fewmonths after BMS gave back the rights tocabozantinib, Exelixis unveiled Phase IIdata suggesting the compound had majorpotential to treat prostate cancer. The trialwas small, but 19 of the 20 patients sawcomplete or partial improvement in theirbone scans. Further, nearly everyone experiencedrelief from bone pain, an oftendebilitating side effect of the disease.Back in Chicago early this month for thestart of this year’s ASCO meeting, Morrisseywas eager to discuss the next set ofdata for Exelixis’ lead drug. Cabozantinibwas the subject of three oral sessions atthe meeting and received extensive presscoverage leading up to the event. TheWWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 15 JUNE 20, 2011