Laureation address for Dr Nicholas Lydon
Chancellor, I have the honour to present for the degree
of Doctor of Laws honoris causa, Dr Nick Lydon whose
work has revolutionized the field of cancer drug discovery.
Nick Lydon was educated at Strathallan School near
Perth and then at the University of Leeds from where he
graduated with a B.Sc in Biochemistry and Zoology in 1978.
He then returned to Scotland to take up a research
studentship in the Department of Biochemistry at the
University of Dundee under the supervision of Dr David
Stansfield. After obtaining a Ph.D. degree in 1982 for
research on luteinizing hormone, he joined a division of the
pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough in France that
was headed by Alex Matter, who invited Nick to move with
him to Switzerland a few years later when he was appointed
to a senior position at CIBA Geigy Pharmaceuticals.
At CIBA Geigy, Nick decided to start a research
programme aimed at developing drugs that target “kinases”
a class of enzyme that had first attracted his interest when
he was working in Dundee, and which are converted to
forms with abnormally high activity in a number of cancers.
This was a revolutionary idea at the time that required the
development of novel and difficult technologies, but by 1993
he and his team had succeeded in developing compounds
capable of inactivating several cancer-inducing “kinases” in
the “test tube”. One of these drugs, called Gleevec, switched
off a “kinase”, whose mutation caused a type of blood cancer
called CML. A collaboration with Brian Druker, a clinician
working in the USA, then established that Gleevec was
extremely effective in killing cancer cells from patients with
CML. This convinced CIBA-Geigy to start a clinical trial in
1997 and the rest, as they say, is history. Gleevec showed
dramatic responses almost immediately and it soon became
unethical to continue the trials because all the patients given
the drug lived while those given a placebo died. Gleevec was
approved for clinical use in a record time for an anti-cancer
agent. A follow-up study showed that, remarkably, 90% of
the patients given the drug were still alive and well five years
later, all of whom would have died within weeks before the
invention of Gleevec. Gleevec, which is taken orally as a pill,
has changed CML from a fatal cancer into a manageable
condition. It is also effective in treating an intestinal cancer
called GIST, because additionally it switches off a different
“kinase”, whose mutation causes this disease.
The current worldwide sales of Gleevec currently
exceed £2 billion per annum making it the most important
drug in the portfolio of Novartis, the company formed by the
merger of CIBA-Geigy and Sandoz in the mid 1990s.
Gleevec has not only saved the lives of thousands of people,
but has revolutionized the field of cancer drug discovery.
About 60% of cancer R&D in the pharmaceutical industry
today is now focused on developing drugs that target
“kinases”. Seventeen such drugs have subsequently been
approved for clinical use, and over 150 more are undergoing
clinical trials. The current market for drugs that target
“kinases” is £10 billion per annum, which is predicted to
double by 2020. For these discoveries, Nick and the clinician
Brian Druker were jointly awarded a number of major
research prizes, including, in 2002, the Kettering Prize from
General Motors, one of the world’s most prestigious cancer
research prizes and, in 2009, The Lasker Clinical Research
Award, second only to the Nobel Prize in it prestige.
When Gleevec started clinical trials in 1997, Nick
Lydon decided to leave Novartis and set up his own
company in Boston, USA. Called “Kinetix”, this company
exploited novel and improved technologies to develop
several new anti-cancer drugs that target “kinases”, one of
which has now reached the most advanced stage of clinical
trials and is likely to be approved soon for the treatment of
several cancers. Indeed, Nick’s company Kinetix was so
successful that it was acquired in 2000 by Amgen, the
world’s largest biotechnology company and led to Nick
moving to California to become Vice President for Amgen’s
cancer research programmes.
However, a couple of years later Nick decided to leave
Amgen and, in what he calls “a mid life crisis”, spent a year
thinking about what he wanted to do next. He moved to
Jackson Hole in Wyoming, a remote region in the Rocky
Mountains, where he indulged his passion for skiing and
climbing mountains, originally kindled by outings to the
Glenshee ski area when he was a Ph.D. student at Dundee.
He then joined the company Ambit Biosciences and became
involved in developing another drug that is showing promise
for the treatment of another type of leukaemia called AML.
He also founded a company called Anaptys Bio in 2005.
Based in San Diego, California, this company uses improved
methods to produce antibodies for cancer therapy. This year
he has founded two more companies in Boston, USA. One
called Staurus is aimed at developing antibodies as novel
antibiotics
to
fight
the
pathogenic
bacterium,
Staphylococcus aureus, while the other, called Blueprint
Medicines, is aimed at developing personalized medicines for
cancer.
Nick still lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he is
particularly proud of the Medical Clinic that he and his
clinician partner Sally have founded to provide improved
health care for the largely rural community who live around
Jackson Hole. In their spare time Nick and Sally both enjoy
riding their horses, while Nick also competes in sailing races
in his F18 Catamaran. He continues to ski in the rocky
mountains and, although no longer climbing mountains, he
still goes mountain biking in the Summer.
Chancellor, I have the honour to invite you to confer
upon our distinguished alumnus Dr Nick Lydon, the degree
of Doctor of Laws.