Mark Fishman does not sulked his pleasure

"We are at the heart of what is best in the field of American biology." We rely on this proximity to boost creativity and productivity of our researchers. "Mark Fishman does not sulked his pleasure. For four years, he led the R & D the Swiss group Novartis global biopharmaceutical. Its objective is ambitious: "change the rules of the game of pharmaceutical discovery". It's actually decrypt genetic mutations and elucidate responsible for Biomolecular phenomena of human diseases. Mark Fishman is convinced that the detailed understanding of cellular dysfunction will pave the way for a new concept: transverse medicine. "The deciphering of the human genome delivered us a series of words without great significance." It is now know the grammar that gives meaning to these information. "The understanding of the mechanisms responsible for rare diseases will us be very helpful to explain the complexity of the cell functioning and open new avenues of development".

Build on the cafeteria effect

In passing, this approach popular in major laboratories should replenish the portfolio of the pharmaceutical industry, significantly depleted over the past five or six years. "Our business is based on science." "It is by deciphering the root causes of the diseases that we develop more effective medicines or by improving the quality of life of patients, while eliminating side effects to the maximum" indicates the American researcher.

To achieve this goal, Mark Fishman has an exceptional tool: it runs five institutes specialized in biotechnology throughout the world. In total, not far from 3,000 researchers to identify at least 30 "targets" per year, i.e. drugs having reached the level of proof of concept (potentially industrialisables with identified means of production). Sign of the times, the President of this network of the NIBR (Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research) is not installed in Basel, the historic capital of the Swiss group. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the scientific and industrial biotechnology American capitals.

To succeed this implementation across the Atlantic, the Basel laboratory has not homework. Rather than build remote premises of the University pool of the city, he chose reconfigure old industrial buildings. The new centre is located at a stone's throw from the famous locomotives of the city: MIT, Harvard University, Whitehead Institute, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute. "All US biotech firms are in the corner," summarizes Mason Freeman, responsible for research on diseases of metabolism. The Swiss group established an essential parameter of scientific creativity: the cafeteria effect. The geographical proximity between researchers leads informal exchanges reveal the use source of very fruitful collaborations.

It is one of the local industrial symbols that served as a catalyst to this mutation: a group Necco confectionery plant constructed in 1930. Work began in July 2002 and the first researchers are installed in April 2004. The result of this retrofit is one of the finest architectural achievements of the city. A building of stone and glass illuminated by a giant atrium him also created intentionally to induce scientific chat. Nearly 1,400 researchers from the 4 corners of the earth work in this hive bringing together under one roof the biologists, geneticists, chemists, and clinicians.

One of their favorite tools is a small 2-3 cm fish known to all lovers of aquarium: zebrafish. The "zebra fish" embryos are transparent and researchers can follow in real time and the sous-microscope the development of the heart-lung system and vessels. Thanks to a particular technique of visualization (by grafting of the fluorescent protein GFP), it can even track a whole series of physiological phenomena: digestion of food, neurodegeneration, or migration of cells in the body. "Genetic proximity between the Zebrafish and human is close to 99 for certain proteins," said Thomas Hughes, responsible for research on diabetes.

In this context of research basic all-out, collaborations with academic science multiply. The Swiss group thus associated at the Broad Institute, one of the new local stars of research in genetics (see box). An agreement in four (Novartis, Broad, Harvard, University of Lund in Sweden) was signed recently. Objective: to explore the genetic basis for type 2 diabetes, which wreaks havoc in the United States. "We seek a reconciling researchers and physicians by making work more possible together and patients", concludes Mason Freeman.