Research Areas Our mission to
transform cancer care

A pivotal moment of my career was the opportunity

to join an effort

collaborating with Dr. Jim Allison in the early days

of exploring immune checkpoint blockade for cancer.

I had previously conducted clinical research

on immunotherapy approaches

to help treat chronic infections,

and eventually I turned to focus

on immune checkpoint blockade for cancer.

When the few investigators in the immunotherapy field

would gather to present their data at global meetings,

we were relegated to a conference room

at the edge of the venue.

And people walking by would look at us

and say, "Oh, those dreamers."

And now after significant research into immunotherapies,

the treatment landscape has changed dramatically.

And knowing that I played a role in that,

well, I feel enormously gratified,

validated in my resolute conviction

to pursue this path of research,

and very fortunate to have had the collaborators

and opportunities to make this happen.

When I was a practicing oncologist,

I used to treat patients with different cancers,

and usually these patients are diagnosed

and then the disease progressed,

and you use the standard of care options,

but then you run out of options.

And that was never good enough for me.

I did not accept that we did not have enough options,

and I wanted to find many more options.

And that was the driver for me to come to development.

At Regeneron, we have many physician scientists

and we have a common experience.

We share the challenges of treating patients in the clinic,

and that is what drives our research

and ultimately finding new potential treatment for them.

If I had to select my career again,

I would follow exactly the same path.

I love what I do.

From my perspective, the big success over the past

20 years in immunotherapy has centered around our ability

as an oncology field to manipulate one particular type

of immune cell, the T-cell.

Increasingly, we're understanding that there are many other

important immune cells in tumors and we need to and will

better understand how to modulate

their activity to bring the entire power

of the immune system to bear against cancer.

We really have an opportunity to work with the immune system

that we were born with to better manipulate

or orchestrate its activity against cancers.

We are really in the midst of an explosion of knowledge

that we can really act on to improve outcomes

for patients with cancer.

There are quite a few of these turning points

that led me to where I am today.

One was seeing patients with HIV or AIDS

who I had taken on just before

the availability of the new antiviral protease inhibitors

and retrieve them from death's door.

This convinced me of the power of science

to change the trajectory of people's lives.

While it's gratifying to have contributed

to making immunotherapy

the fourth pillar of cancer treatment

in our appropriate patients,

along with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy,

too few patients get durable benefit from these treatments.

My white whale is to turn as many cancers as possible

into manageable conditions instead of death sentences.

We are still just getting

the immuno-oncology revolution started.

It's imperative that we figure out the right combinations.