It’s a tale of two hires. Either Cleveland Clinic Innovations just landed the heavyweight leader of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, or that leader got out of Kansas just in time.
Cleveland Clinic Innovations will look to Tom Thornton, the former president and CEO of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, to manage and expand the Clinic’s promising research collaboration efforts. The job, formally called general manager of alliances for Cleveland Clinic Innovations, is a new position that will help find partnerships with other healthcare institutions to develop new medical technologies, Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Eileen Sheil said.
But Kansas legislators are questioning everything from Thornton’s exit and the way he managed the Kansas organization to the relationship between Thornton and business partners in Ohio. In essence, they assert Thornton was fleeing an uncomfortable situation in Kansas with the help of alliances he made in Cleveland.
“The road to Ohio could be paved with our taxpayers’ dollars, and we’ll be looking into it,” Kansas State Sen. Susan Wagle, who is planning to probe the Ohio connections, told The Wichita Eagle. “It’s really difficult for me to believe that Tom’s wheeling and dealing (at the KBA) didn’t open doors for his new job.”
Sheil said: “Our response to the Kansas article is that we take this very seriously, and are looking into it at this point.”
Thornton resigned from the Kansas Bioscience Authority a week ago and started at Cleveland Clinic almost immediately after. The authority spends hundreds of millions in public dollars to support Kansas’ bioscience industry. But it has become the subject of a criminal investigation and a series of legislative hearings over everything from salaries to conflicts of interest.
Thornton supporters have intimated the probes are politically motivated, and point to the fact that the organization has created more than 1,000 new jobs and nearly $80 million in new wages in the last several years.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Ohio organizations have varying connections with the Kansas Bioscience Authority. BioEnterprise, the Cleveland-area biotech trade group, received more than $200,000 in consulting fees from the authority, according to reports in Kansas. Also, Bill Sanford, whose biotech associations range from leading STERIS Corp. to the commercial outlet Symark, is on the Cleveland Clinic’s board as well as the Kansas Bioscience Authority.
BioEnterprise CEO Baiju Shah and Sanford said Thornton’s new job was news to them. Sanford told Kansas media he would have been reluctant to give a recommendation for Thornton because of the good job Thornton was doing there. Shah, meanwhile, said he hadn’t spoken to Thornton in more than a year.
Looming questions could prove disruptive to Thornton’s position in Cleveland. Cleveland Clinic Innovations continues to provide new revenue opportunities for the health system. A Clinic spinoff recently landed the health system $28 million, and Cleveland Clinic continues to grow a promising pipeline for additional exits. The alliances Thornton will oversee are crucial to maximizing Cleveland Clinic’s strength in commercialization.
