Jennifer Cook, Grail CEO
Come January 2, Illumina-spinout Grail will be headed by Jennifer Cook, whose path to the top job has been markedly different from that of its founding CEO, Jeff Huber.
Cook has over 30 years experience in the life sciences, a majority of which has been spent at Genentech. Following its 2009 acquisition by Roche, she began managing the two companies’ combined pipeline of around 80 molecules, representing approximately $80 billion in value and $9 billion per year in costs, her LinkedIn states.
Cook continued to move up the ladder, becoming head of pharma region Europe (stationed in Switzerland) and then, most recently, Roche/Genentech’s global head of clinical operations. In 2016, she was named Woman of the Year by the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA).
It’s a very different journey than that of her predecessor, Jeff Huber, a Silicon Valley tech leader who headed programs at eBay, Excite@Home, and Google.
At the latter, he oversaw the development of Google’s advertising products, Google Apps, Google Maps, and Google Earth. While he dipped his toes in the life sciences towards the end of his tenure at the company – at Google X – he was very much a Big Data expert when he became the founding CEO of the the Menlo Park, California-based startup in February 2016.
A mere 18 months later, Huber unexpectedly resigned.
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.
On Thursday, a Grail spokeswoman said the bringing Cook on board signaled the company’s shift towards commercialization.
“In the summer, Jeff and the Board decided that in order to lead the company through the next phase of growth, it was an appropriate time to transition leadership to guide GRAIL to commercialization,” said Charlotte Arnold, in an email.
In the meantime, Jeff built a “strong foundation while CEO, including defining the mission, building a strong team, launching the largest clinical research program ever conducted in genomic medicine, and creating a culture of scientific and technical rigor,” she noted.
Huber is still actively involved in the business as vice chairman of the Board of Directors, the spokeswoman noted, bringing expertise at “the intersection between life sciences and computer science.”
Cook, meanwhile, is no newbie to the world of healthcare.
She has a background in early-stage research. After earning a BA degree in human biology and an MS in biology from Stanford University, she secured an MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley.
The unicorn startup
Grail launched with a big splash in January of 2016 right before the JP Morgan Healthcare conference kicked off with a $100 million in funds raised. During Huber’s tenure in early 2017, it pulled off the largest-ever private biotech financing round, with backing from ARCH Venture Partners, Amazon, Bezos Expeditions, Bill Gates and more. Grail now has secured over $1 billion in funding.
The company’s mission and messaging were honed from the start: For cancers discovered in the earliest stages, stages one and two, the prognosis is typically positive — a 70-90 percent survival rate depending on the cancer type. Cancer that is discovered late-stage, stages three and four, is roughly the inverse with 80-90 percent of patients succumbing to the disease.
Grail wants to drastically shift the odds in the patient’s favor by detecting cancer early. It would take the form of a pan cancer blood test that is routine, preventive, and actionable.
The team is deploying ultra-deep, ultra-wide sequencing to isolate tiny fragments of tumor DNA or cells from a standard blood draw. Before the company can get to that point, it’ll need to collect enormous quantities of data through expensive longitudinal studies.
The Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study was the first to launch. It aims to analyze blood samples from thousands of participants to build a reference library for what a ‘normal’ blood profile looks like.
STRIVE, a longitudinal, prospective, observational study, was subsequently launched in April. It seeks to enroll up to 120,000 women undergoing routine mammograms at Mayo Clinic and throughout the Sutter Health system in Northern California. A blood sample will be taken during the visit to serve as a baseline measure for detecting breast cancer in the blood.
It’s a long, data-intensive project, which may get some assistance from a China-based diagnostics company – Cirina – that Grail acquired in May for an undisclosed sum.
Grail’s spokeswoman said the move was designed to expand the company’s global footprint and its applicability. The focus in Asia will be on the development of tests for the early detection of cancers prevalent in the region, while the United States effort continues unabated.
“When GRAIL was first formed in 2016, we anticipated it would take several years before we could start delivering early cancer detection tests,” the spokeswoman wrote. “We are excited that through our collaboration with The Chinese University of Hong Kong, we are now planning to launch our first product next year.”
Commercialization will add one more challenging business component for the new CEO to juggle. Grail will be hoping her leadership abilities extend to teams working on data analytics as well as those rooted in molecular biology.
