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sabine.vollmer@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8992
Dr. Allen Roses returned to Duke University after 10 years at GlaxoSmithKline in RTP. In his new job, he hopes to find promising drug research ideas that the pharmaceutical industry isn't pursuing.
Staff Photo by Juli Leonard
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DR. ALLEN ROSES
AGE: 65
JOB: Director of Duke University's new drug discovery institute; Jefferson-Pilot professor of neurobiology and genetics; member of Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy; senior scholar with the health sector management program at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.
CAREER: Joined Duke University in 1970. In 1985, he became the first director of the university's Joseph and Kathleen Bryan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. In 1997, he left Duke for a stint at GlaxoSmithKline, where he was senior vice president for genetics research and pharmacogenetics. He returned to Duke in January.
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Roses blames the pharmaceutical industry for a lot of its drug-discovery failures.Nothing makes drug discovery more difficult and expensive than replacing the head of research and development every four to five years, he said."It's the discontinuity when it takes 10 to 15 years to make a product," Roses said.Stephen Frye, GSK's former head of drug discovery research in RTP, agrees. "Every time there's new leadership, priorities are reassessed, and many projects are killed," said Frye, who left GSK in August to head UNC-CH's drug discovery center.In 20 years at GSK, Frye worked through two mergers and saw at least five research and development heads come and go.When Dr. Moncef Slaoui replaced Dr. Tadataka Yamada as GSK's chairman of research and development in June 2006, a reorganization followed.Frye said he asked himself: Do I want to stay and watch that movie play out again? He didn't, so he joined his alma mater in October to build the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery from scratch.Frye plans to match physicians at UNC's medical school with chemists from the pharmacy school to generate innovative drug research. "We're trying to unlock the gridlock," he said.Scanning the patentsAt Duke, Roses is reading patents in hopes of finding drug research ideas that the pharmaceutical industry isn't pursuing. He has seen several that look promising for his virtual company. Roses is the company's only employee; he works out of a conference center on campus.Roses has found seven experts in different areas of drug development who are willing to help him turn the ideas into experimental drugs that can be tested in animals and humans.In two to three years, he hopes to sell the rights to a couple of experimental drugs to pharmaceutical companies interested in bringing the medicines to market."The idea is to prime the pump with a few successes," Roses said.If it works out, Duke stands to benefit from any deals Roses' company makes with the pharmaceutical industry.The university is worried that NIH funding for basic research will decrease in coming years, but it could receive millions in milestone and royalty payments."He's a very clever guy," Duke's Williams said about Roses.
