ST SEBASTIAN’S

SCIENCE
The Road to Novartis
Matt LaMarche '93 describes the journey from the classrooms at St. Sebastian's to the
laboratory of Novartis.
By Dan Tobin
Germs… they’re everywhere. They wait to attack us when
we least expect it. They cause us to cough, to sneeze, and
to run a fever. They sap us of our energy and our appetite.
If we’re lucky, our immune system kicks into high gear and, in a
day or two, beats back the viruses and bacteria that have set up
shop in our bodies.
Sometimes, however, the grasp on our system is too much for
our bodies to handle and we need to call in reinforcements to help in
our fight against the invaders. In these cases, we rely on the
experience of our doctors, the men and women who have a treasure
chest of pills and potions at their disposal.
But, from where do those pills and potions come?
Matt LaMarche ’93 can answer that one.
What He Does
Matt LaMarche is a Medicinal Chemist and Project Team Leader
for Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge.
“I’m in drug discovery research,” stated LaMarche. “I’m a
research chemist who identifies compounds that are drug
candidates. Right now I am working in infectious disease, medicinal
chemistry.”
More specifically, LaMarche’s team is currently working on an
anti-viral project for Hepatitis C. As Team Leader for the project, he
has to identify the strategy and how the team is going to attack the
disease. Basically, there is a protein target they are trying to
modulate with small molecules. LaMarche is responsible for the
chemistry strategy and the overall project strategy for how the team
will modulate the target to affect the disease.
“Part of my job is to run the lab,” LaMarche commented. “I
oversee two medicinal chemists who execute reactions and
purifications in the lab. They combine chemicals in organic
synthesis reactions to make more complex molecules, then purify
those materials and submit them to our biologists, who measure
whether or not the compounds have the desired biological activity or
not.”
As the Team Leader, LaMarche is there to help with the
optimization of those reactions and purifications. He is also
Matt LaMarche with his wife, Ellen, and their children, Julia and
Madeline.
38 | ST. SEBASTIAN’S MAGAZINE Volume V, Issue I