Incoming JAX president sees new, accelerated opportunities for biomedical research
COURTESY / The Jackson Laboratory
Lon Cardon, currently chief scientific strategy officer with BioMarin Pharmaceutical, will become president and CEO of the Jackson Laboratory in November.
The incoming president and CEO at Bar Harbor-based Jackson Laboratory is a biotech industry leader and human genetics researcher who has helped shape a new era for human health and looks forward to continuing that commitment.
Lon Cardon will become president and CEO on Nov. 29. He will succeed Dr. Edison Liu, who has directed the internationally prominent biomedical research institution for a decade.
Cardon holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and has conducted postdoctoral research in mathematics at Stanford University. He spent the first half of his career in academic research, initially as professor of bioinformatics at the University of Oxford and then as professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington and co-chair of the Herbold Bioinformatics Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
From 2007 to 2017, he worked at GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), where he served as a senior vice president, leading departments and divisions in genetics, molecular biology, computational biology, statistics and epidemiology.
Cardon is currently chief scientific strategy officer and senior vice president of BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (Nasdaq: BMRN), a California-based company whose core business is developing enzyme replacement therapies for rare diseases.
Mainebiz asked Cardon about his career trajectory and his vision for JAX. Here’s an edited transcript.
Mainebiz: How did you become interested in the biomedical field?
Lon Cardon: I was a pre-medical student as an undergraduate. It was a great opportunity but, for whatever reason, I didn’t love medicine at that time. What I loved was two disciplines that had no right being next to each other. I liked biology and I liked statistics and mathematics. In Colorado when I was pursuing my Ph.D., I was fortunate to connect with an advisor who took me under his wing. I learned the power of mentoring — a lesson I took with me through the rest of my career. It launched me into a career that took many turns.
MB: Could you give an example of your accomplishments over the years?
LC: In England when I was a professor at Oxford, Wellcome [a global charitable foundation] was investing in genetics. At the time, the genetics community knew of only 10 to 12 genes that caused diseases. The question was, ‘Is it true that genes underlie disease, or is it hypothetical?’ I asked Wellcome for funding for a pilot study. Another person from Cambridge asked basically the same question but from a different perspective. Wellcome said no to both of us, then said, ‘If you can work together, we’ll write the check.’ That was 2001.
We gathered every clinical investigator in the country who had access to at least 1,000 patients. Five years later, we had identified 24 genes. It was recognized as Science’s “breakthrough of the year.” We published a landmark study in the scientific journal Nature.
Today, the approaches that we used to find those genes have discovered more than 7,000 genes. It’s not just about those genes. It was the method we put together. Today, it’s a standard approach and has been used for many diseases.
MB: Why did you leave academic research to work in the biopharmaceutical industry?
LC: My next question was, ‘Okay, we know how to find the genes. What are we going to do with them to improve human health?’ I wanted to understand how to translate these findings that I knew were coming from the next generation of scientists. So I crossed to industry.
MB: How did your path lead from GlaxoSmithKline, a large pharmaceutical company, to BioMarin, a biopharmaceutical innovator for rare diseases?
LC: I had many different roles at GlaxoSmithKline, but more as an administrator than a scientist. I got too far away from my real love, which is genetics. By that time the field really had grown up. I had the opportunity to take the more hands-on chief scientific officer role at BioMarin.
MB: What attracted you to JAX?
LC: Like any geneticist, I’ve known of the exceptionally deep scientific work at JAX my entire career. The opportunity to lead an organization like this is something no one can overlook.
MB: JAX has been expanding under Dr. Liu. Do you envision further expansion?
LC: In order to grow into this translational area, there are some areas I’m going to try to strengthen. One area I’m committed to, because genetics as a discipline has become so complicated and rich with data, is computational and data analytics to bring it all together. This might tie in with the work of the Roux Institute in Portland as well.
MB: What do you look forward to doing in Bar Harbor in your off-time?
LC: What a magical place. I like cycling and I love sailing.
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