Three days before the 2015 Christmas holiday, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and the Norton, MA, city council decided to exchange presents. The council signed off on a 13-year tax incentive (i.e., a $7 million tax break) in exchange for Alnylam agreeing to build a proposed $100 million facility that will eventually employ up to 220 workers.

I first met Glenn Gormley, M.D., Ph.D., at the 2014 PhRMA’s (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) annual meeting in Washington, D.C. At the time, I was engaged in a conversation with James (Mit) Spears, EVP and general counsel for PhRMA, and so my discussion with Dr. Gormley was brief. However, our encounter reminded me of an idea I once had for doing an article about Daiichi Sankyo. Though the company has a lengthy history, it had little experience in the area of oncology R&D. As Gormley is the senior executive officer and global head of R&D at Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd., as well as chairman of the board, executive chairman and president of Daiichi Sankyo, Inc, I thought perhaps he could share some insight on the company’s approach to entering into the field of developing cancer therapeutics. We conducted our formal interview on June 30, 2014. It resulted in the September 2014 Life Science Leader magazine cover feature — How Daiichi Sankyo Is Venturing Into The Unfamiliar Terrain Of Oncology R&D.

As is my custom, I provide interviewees with questions in advance to guide our discussion. After an article is published, it is rare for me to revisit these questions. Further, it is unheard of for me to receive legally approved written responses to my interview questions — especially after an article is complete. But with Glenn Gormley, I have come to expect the unexpected. What follows are the previously unpublished written responses to my interview questions, which serve to shed additional insight into Daiichi Sankyo’s approach to entering the field of oncology drug development.  

Ever heard of the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle? The general idea behind it is that systems perform best when the design is simple, not complex. My favorite example demonstrating the application of KISS, as well as the impact of failing to do so, is captured in a scene in the 1995 movie Apollo 13. An incident necessitates three astronauts use the lunar module (LM), a ship built just for landing on the moon, as a lifeboat to survive.

Project Atlas is a 200,000 square foot biologics manufacturing facility. This facility is unique because its entire upstream line utilizes single-use systems, but what’s more interesting is the plant $210 million dollar price tag is $127.6 million shy of the company’s annual profit.

Life Science Leader magazine’s chief editor Rob Wright, and Outsourced Pharma and Clinical Leader chief editor Ed Miseta (part of the Life Science Connect group of publications), were recently granted a rare behind the scenes tour of three of Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) Research Laboratories (LRL) at the company’s global corporate headquarter in Indianapolis on October 2, 2013.

I first met Mark Bamforth, the president and CEO of Gallus BioPharmaceuticals, at a conference shortly after he had acquired/founded his CMO in St. Louis. The company was so new many of the employees at the event didn’t even have business cards.