‘You’ll stick with this until we cure cancer, Nick.’
By ELLYN SANTIAGO
Nicholas A. Saccomano, PhD, is described by Terri Brodeur Breast Cancer Foundation colleagues as the “backbone of the efforts to find and fund research.”
“The entire backbone may be a little too much,” he joked. “Maybe two-thirds of a vertebra?”
A Columbia University-trained chemist by degree, and nature, Saccomano has been a pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries R&D leader for 35-plus years, 20 of those at the executive level in R&D organizations. He’s guided drug discovery programs from idea to registration; developing and managing R&D technologies and, importantly, has built and managed alliances and partnerships between the public and private sectors. His career began at Pfizer Global Research and Development in the mid-1980s and served many executive Pfizer leadership roles for 15 years. He was most recently the chief science officer, independent director, and scientific advisor for half a dozen bioscience, and oncology drug-maker companies. A year ago, Saccomano became President and CEO of OnKure Therapeutics in Boulder, Colorado, where he’s been based for many years.
While at Pfizer, he met the force of nature that was Norma Logan.
In 2006, she and Sandy Maniscalco created the Foundation and named it in honor of Terri Brodeur, a young mother who died of breast cancer in 2005. Logan died of breast cancer six months after Brodeur. A grassroots nonprofit, 100 percent of gross fundraising dollars goes to breast cancer research. TBBCF has raised over $6.5 million and awarded more than 60 grants to researchers in basic, pre-clinical, and clinical research who are studying a cure for breast cancer and better ways to treat the disease.
In its infancy in 2006, Logan asked Saccomano to serve on the TBBCF Scientific Advisory Board. “I remember her …talking about far-reaching goals and on the back of that came, ‘You’ll stick with this until we cure cancer, Nick.’ That’s what she told me. It wasn’t a question. So I said, ‘OK. What do we do after that?’ That was the level of the discussion and we agreed that this wouldn’t be a short-term commitment.”
That was 18 years ago.
A TBBCF founding member, Saccomano is chair of the Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board which includes: Michael Garabedian, PhD Professor and Course Director, New York University Medical Center; Mike Morin, PhD President and Chief Scientific Officer Immunome; Norma Logan’s sister-in-law Susan Logan, PhD, Associate Professor, New York University Medical Center; and John LaMattina, PhD, Co-Chair, Former President, Pfizer Global Research and Development.
The Scientific Advisory Board’s role, with Saccomano leading, is to determine which researchers’ breast cancer proposals will be funded by TBBCF.
LaMattina said Saccomano brings singular abilities and expertise to the board and the Foundation.
Every year, the TBBCF Scientific Advisory Board receives 25 research proposals. LaMattina said Saccomano is “in charge.”
“Yes, I run the interviews and the meetings, but this is much more of a collaborative effort. We are a good team and care deeply about the Foundation,” he said. “It’s been the same people for 17 years.”
The process of selecting the three to four research proposals that will be funded each year begins, and the group of candidates is whittled down in “an established process.”
“The board is a group of superheroes. Mike [Morin] comes at it with a very academic industrial biology approach. Mike [Garabedian] is a professor. Susan is a professor as well. Everybody thinks deeply about the relevant elements, and then we collaborate,” said Saccomano. “While we all discriminate on the merits of the research plan, Susan and Mike will always follow up on the person’s pedigree, and go back to their papers. I and Mike M are thinking more forwardly—“where’s the research going to lead?” We fund the person and their work, which in our view provides the greatest potential impact for patients. We’re sort of like a string quartet, two violins, a viola, and a cello. We work together so well, and we’ve gotten some great people funded.”
Though he’s currently an advisor for several companies, he makes the time for TBBCF. “Reading 20+ very interesting scientific proposals and then talking to a bunch of really smart, passionate young people, that’s no burden,” he said. “I’m out here in Colorado. For TBBCF, I make calls, send emails, and read proposals. It’s part of my life. It’s integrated into my overall professional life.”
He “looks to” those who have been with TBBCF from the beginning. “They are the ones that keep this thing alive.”
The alchemy of bringing disciplines together to create a medicine from idea to market.
“The way you make drugs, you have to bring a dozen or more deep disciplines together to create something. It’s not one set of scientists or disciplines, it's everything from creative writing to mathematics,” Saccomano said. “Since I found myself guiding these teams earlier rather than later, in my career, I was always working to be able to speak the languages of the natives, so to speak. While I still love chemistry more than anything else, to me, it’s beautiful and artful, it’s just one arrow in a quiver. You need the whole quiver to create a drug. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to biologists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, and clinical people to understand exactly what it’s going to take to make that drug. And that’s where I feel/hope I am right now.”
He and his company are making a breast cancer drug. “It’s interestingly poetic,” he said. “It is a poetic moment. I don’t know exactly how I found my way to it, but the company I work with now—this is public knowledge—has a drug in clinic for breast cancer. That’s significant. This could be an important drug. There’s a lot of excitement in science around oncology, and breast cancer in particular,” he said. “In a way, it’s sort of ironic. I’ve been working in breast cancer for the last 18 years for TBBCF. I’d never worked in breast cancer before, and now I find myself as part of an organization (OnKure Therapeutics) that’s working to bring an important breast cancer drug to the market.”
That’s where he is now, in clinical trials, and there he’s found something “wonderful”.
“Right now, I am seeing some of the fellows we funded making significant contributions to the field, which was very gratifying for me. I’m thinking, ‘Some years ago, we funded this person’s career and now this person is a visible part of the scientific community that I work within.’ I’m seeing these people whose careers are growing and progress is being made, so now, it’s full circle, we’re all pointed at the same ultimate goal. It’s kind of wonderful”.
And though he heaps praise on the researchers and physicians and scientists, at the end of the day, he said, it’s the volunteers and more specifically, those who participate in the TBBCF annual signature fundraiser, “Walk for a Cure”, who are key.
“It all comes down to the walkers in October. Without them, none of this would be realized,” Saccomano said. “It all comes down to them. Where would we be without them?”