Dr. Methvin Isaac: Three organizations, one office

Dr. Methvin Isaac.
(Steve Durant)

Methvin Isaac’s office is modest in size, but comfortable. Through its glass door, he can see technicians and brand new equipment at work in OICR’s brightly lit medicinal chemistry laboratory. Across the open-concept lab, there’s light coming in through large windows.

When Isaac first moved into this office in 2005, it was a big change for him. Starting out as a research chemist in the biotechnology sector, he worked in a windowless space beneath a greenhouse in a bleak industrial park near Toronto’s airport. When the company he worked for moved downtown, he and other chemists lobbied for the exact opposite of what they were used to.

“We needed some light for a change,” he explains. “We wanted a bigger space, and we designed the labs with more of an open concept in mind.”

The company Isaac worked for, NPS Pharmaceuticals, settled on a bright lab with glass-walled offices surrounding a giant central space for benches and equipment. The space has since been modified to suit OICR’s needs, but it still looks very different from a typical chemistry laboratory.

There have been many other changes in the laboratory’s short life, but there has also been one constant: the occupant of office 858.

Isaac started his career with Allelix Biopharmaceuticals, a Toronto-based biotechnology company, in 1997, and joined NPS Pharmaceuticals when it acquired Allelix in 2000. At the time of the merger, both companies were working on new treatments for osteoperosis and NPS wanted to combine strategies.

At NPS, Isaac began working closely with AstraZeneca as a liaison for NPS’s gastrointestinal group on a major collaboration to develop a drug to help acid reflux patients who don’t respond well to protein pump inhibitors. (NPS’s compound targeted glutamate receptors that regulate the sphincter that separates the stomach from the esophagus.) He also worked as an innovator on several of NPS’s internal projects.

During his time at NPS, the company’s stock price soared from $6 to $52. The company grew substantially as investors took notice of its promising portfolio of intellectual property (IP). However, the company’s rise was short-lived. The stock price dropped quickly after a less-than-favourable ruling from the FDA on one of its most promising drugs. The company’s shareholders decided to pursue a different strategy that would see NPS focus on a narrower range of activities – with a much smaller workforce.

Most of the Toronto operations were shut down in late 2006, but Isaac and several other chemists stayed on to liaise with AstraZeneca as technologies and knowledge were transferred. He stayed with NPS until all Toronto operations were shuttered in mid-2007.

Within a few months of leaving NPS, Isaac was back in the MaRS Centre, working for Bioquest Innovations. Bioquest is a small company that examines ideas in bio-sciences to determine what work would need to be done to turn the idea into a commercially viable technology, then invests in doing this valued-adding work. It was started by Calvin Stiller, a Canadian scientist and businessperson. (Stiller was recently appointed Chair of OICR’s Board of Directors.)

Bioquest had acquired some of NPS’s IP and wanted Isaac and several other chemists to continue working on the research. However, the company occupies just a few hundred square feet at MaRS and didn’t have space to accommodate its newly hired chemists.

“Bioquest knew that OICR had some space it wasn’t using yet on the eighth floor,” he explains. “They arranged to sub-lease this space until OICR needed it – and pretty soon I was back in my old office!”

During his time at Bioquest, Isaac became Director of Medicinal Chemistry for a spinoff company called Cascade, which was co-founded by Frank Gleeson, a businessperson specializing in biotechnology who is now an executive-in-residence at OICR.

In March 2008, OICR needed the eighth floor space for its new lab and Isaac moved to an office elsewhere in MaRS. When venture capital started to become tight in summer 2008, Isaac left Bioquest. Gleeson introduced him to Rima Al-awar, who had recently been appointed Director of Medicinal Chemistry at OICR. The two chemists discussed Isaac’s experience and goals and decided he’d be a good match for the Institute’s new platform.

Within a few months, he was again back in his office on the eighth floor.

At OICR, Isaac continues to work as a research chemist, where his work involves transferring basic laboratory discoveries into treatments for cancer. The Medicinal Chemistry Platform takes targets identified by basic researchers and uses cutting-edge chemistry techniques to develop drugs that could be used to fight cancer. The team’s research is one of many steps in a molecule’s journey from the lab to the clinic – a journey that also involves biologists, computer scientists, clinical trials professionals and businesspeople.

“By working with so many collaborators, at OICR we can really take a longer-term view of our work, and also combine the best of academic and industry approaches to science,” Isaac says. “Without pressure from stakeholders, we can avoid the chronic fear of failure that often exists in industry. But on the other hand, we have to be accountable for our science and focus on the potential clinical value of our work. The onus is on us to indentify the pieces of academic research to move along to the clinic.”