1859 Summer 2009
1859 Summer 2009
1859 Summer 2009
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Did you always know you had a<br />
vocation for medicine?<br />
it’s one of those areas where i thought i'd end up,<br />
if i were really honest with myself. There was a lot<br />
of pressure in my family for someone to end up in<br />
medicine. i was the youngest of four, and none of<br />
the other siblings went into medicine.<br />
What brought you to OHSU?<br />
There were several factors. With recruiting,<br />
there’s the push and the pull. The push was that<br />
at harvard, the administration didn’t believe in<br />
the approach i was taking, so there wasn’t much<br />
of a future for me there. i started looking for<br />
a place with a commitment to cancer research<br />
and a great place to live. grover Bagby, then the<br />
director of ohSu’s nascent Cancer institute,<br />
believed in what i was doing.<br />
Tell me about the life of Gleevec since<br />
it came out commercially in 2001. What<br />
has changed?<br />
The most important aspect is that patients with<br />
this kind of leukemia had a three- to five-year<br />
life expectancy. gleevec took a disease that was<br />
fatal and now 95% of patients taking gleevec are<br />
alive and well at five years. The average life expectancy<br />
of these patients is 30 years. The most<br />
important thing about this is that it has saved<br />
hundreds of thousands of lives and completely<br />
transformed the way we think about cancer.<br />
Cancer treatment centers used to treat everything<br />
with various different kinds of painful<br />
chemotherapy. after gleevec, everything they<br />
have in their arsenal is a targeted therapy. it has<br />
completely changed the way that every major<br />
drug company thinks about cancer.<br />
What does the $100 million Knight gift<br />
do for OHSU?<br />
This will transform our ability to care for cancer<br />
patients in oregon and transform our research<br />
capabilities. The reality is that a breakthrough<br />
like gleevec has a global impact and can save<br />
hundreds of thousands of lives. our goal is to<br />
create an environment where these types of<br />
breakthroughs become commonplace.<br />
You have a wish list of your own.<br />
What else would you consider crucial<br />
but yet absent in the formation of a<br />
top cancer institute?<br />
We still need more people, and over the next five<br />
to 10 years, you’ll see an influx of talent into oregon<br />
because of the Knight gift. But, i view the<br />
Knight gift as a beginning not an end. We will<br />
still need more funding to accomplish our goals,<br />
and as people see our progress, i am certain that<br />
they will want to be part of our winning team.<br />
What i’d also like to see is the biotech industry<br />
growing in parallel with the Knight institute to<br />
help us develop and commercialize our research.<br />
What are you currently working on?<br />
our own research is focused on three areas.<br />
a small percentage of patients have become<br />
resistant to gleevec, and we’re working on<br />
developing new treatments for those patients.<br />
also, gleevec is able to control leukemia<br />
as long as people stay on this therapy<br />
but unable to eradicate it outright. We’re<br />
thinking about whether there is something<br />
we can add to gleevec to make it a true cure.<br />
lastly, it took 25 years to identify the target<br />
for gleevec. We now have the ability to identify<br />
new targets in other leukemias in two to<br />
three months. if you can identify a target, it<br />
allows you to develop a drug like gleevec to<br />
alleviate and eradicate it.<br />
gleevec is a $3-billion-a-year-drug. imagine<br />
what we could do identifying molecular targets<br />
in two to three months, then developing<br />
drugs like gleevec to target these abnormalities,<br />
and what 20 drugs like gleevec would<br />
mean for oregon.<br />
You’re also working in some role with<br />
Portland venture capitalist John Hull in<br />
his new early-stage fund, Marquam Hill<br />
Capital. What is the goal of that fund?<br />
We have an opportunity to do something that’s<br />
unique. Typically, biotech companies license<br />
ideas or technologies from universities for commercialization,<br />
but there is very little interaction<br />
between the company and the university.<br />
“If we’re set up with the right infrastructure,<br />
There could be 20 Gleevecs coming out of<br />
OHSU, not just one. That’s real leveraging.”<br />
imagine instead if you established a set of companies<br />
that collaborated closely with our cancer<br />
institute, working on projects that would assist<br />
the cancer institute with the commercialization<br />
process. as an example, if our lab identifies<br />
a new target for cancer therapy, the biotech<br />
company would then develop a drug that my lab<br />
could test and our cancer institute would run<br />
the initial clinical trials.<br />
drug discovery and clinical trials require tens of<br />
millions of dollars. no university can fund that.<br />
That’s best done by private industry, but we can<br />
partner with industry to make this happen more<br />
quickly, efficiently and economically.<br />
Your gift lies in research. Why not spend<br />
all your time in lab?<br />
The way that i view it is the way former ohSu<br />
president Peter Kohler used to introduce<br />
me: “This is Brian druker, and he discovered<br />
gleevec, and we think he’s got another gleevec<br />
in him.” My mission is to recruit other scientists<br />
and give them the resources and support<br />
to revolutionize cancer treatments. if we’re set<br />
up with the right infrastructure, there could be<br />
20 gleevecs coming out of ohSu, not just one.<br />
That’s real leveraging.<br />
SUMMER 09 <strong>1859</strong> OREGON'S MAGAZINE 51
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