JAX names California biotech veteran as president and CEO, succeeding Edison Liu

Courtesy / JAX Lon Cardon, currently chief scientific strategy officer with BioMarin Pharmaceutical, will become president and CEO of the Jackson Laboratory in November.

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By William Hall

Bar Harbor-based Jackson Laboratory has named a biotech industry leader and human genetics researcher, Lon Cardon, to succeed Dr. Edison Liu next month as president and CEO.

Liu, who has directed the internationally prominent biomedical research institution for a decade, announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down from that role in February 2022. Cardon will become president and CEO on Nov. 29, according to a JAX news release Monday afternoon.

Named as the 2021 Mainebiz Nonprofit Business Leader of the Year, Liu plans to remain at JAX as a professor, and will continue to lead a team of investigators studying cancer genomics with a focus on breast cancer.

David Roux, chairman of the Jackson Laboratory board of trustees, said in the release, “Ed has made an indelible impact at JAX as a leader, researcher, and oncologist in our local communities and within the global biomedical research field. We are now thrilled to appoint Lon as the next president and CEO of JAX. Under his leadership, Lon will guide the Laboratory as it propels into its next intense period of growth.”

Cardon is currently chief scientific strategy officer of BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (Nasdaq: BMRN), a California-based company whose core business is developing enzyme replacement therapies for rare diseases. The company had 2020 revenues of $1.9 billion.

From 2007 to 2017, Cardon 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 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. The author of more than 225 scientific publications, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and has conducted postdoctoral research in mathematics at Stanford University.

In his new role, the release said, Cardon will lead a growth strategy for JAX that combines the lab’s expertise in genetics and genomics with advances in digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and new computation platforms.

“The Jackson Laboratory has a unique combination of critical components to finally approach the long-awaited potential of genetics for translation, coupling deep understanding of mouse models of human disease with extensive genetic and genomics expertise, large-scale research capacity, and computational and data analytics to bring it all together. I am excited to lead the organization to help shape a new era for human health,” Cardon said.

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution with more than 2,400 employees. Headquartered in Bar Harbor, JAX also has facilities in Ellsworth and Augusta, as well as Farmington, Conn.; Sacramento, Calif.; and Shanghai, China.