Chris Moxham - Part 2: From Eli Lilly Recruit to Building a $20M NYC Lab

Intro - 00:00:01: Welcome to the The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee. In our last episode, we spoke with Chris Moxham about his upbringing as the youngest of seven on Long Island, where his father's engineering background and an early heart surgery experience sparked his passion for science. We also explored his pivot from medicine to research at Cornell and the mentors who shaped his leadership style. If you missed it, be sure to go back and listen to part one. In part two, we continue our discussion with Chris as he reflects on his move from Eli Lilly and the cultural contrast he experienced between there and Wyeth, where he worked as a senior research scientist. We also dive into Chris's experience relocating to Indiana for work, the mentors who influenced him early in his career, and some of the foundational lessons he learned in drug discovery. Lastly, we'll hear about Chris's challenges in leading a multi-level, $40 million lab build-out in New York City, where he honed his leadership in high-stakes, high-impact roles.

Jon - 00:01:27: Now I'm very intrigued. Can you talk about when you decided I'm going to commit to Eli Lilly, those early days? One, I guess personally, that move to Indiana, and then the differences maybe between Wyeth and Eli Lilly's lab culture and just how they run.

Chris - 00:01:42: The person who did it for me at Eli Lilly, his name is Jose Caro. He was the VP of Endocrine. Jose was one of the first sort of scientists to discover leptin and leptin action. And I went on the interview there. And basically, after that day of interviewing, he said, Chris, you know, if you want to stay a few extra days with your family, you can do that. And they may be an offer. Day And he said, look, I really want you here. And... My family at the time was not keen on moving to the Midwest. And so initially I told them, no, I said, you know, I can't come. Right. And I remember we went out to the beach that day and came home and there's a message on the answering machine and it was Jose. And he's like, Chris. I really need you to come. I want you to come to Lilly. So let's have a phone call. And so I went back out there and I was like, this is a great place to be. And they really want me to come. And so, again, I think it was really consistent with the Lilly values, right? Respect for people and excellence and integrity. That's what really drew me in. They wanted me as a scientist to be there. They were going to help take care of my family on the way. And so that got me to go to Eli Lilly. Again, Lilly being in the Midwest, the culture is a bit different. It's very much dependent on relationships with people. And so you spend, you know, it can be also pretty nuanced in that way. The culture at YFARist, which was part of American Home Products at the time, yes, being on the East Coast, maybe people were a bit more direct, maybe. But actually, it was actually quite disjointed because, you know, we were in Princeton, New Jersey. You had another research group in Radnor, PA, and they seemed to be really competing with each other. Whereas Eli Lilly... My feeling there throughout all my years, yes, there may have been competition in terms of different therapeutic areas or strategies, but the sites were all trying to work together and really move in the same direction. You know, I started out in the obesity group with just a phenomenal group of scientists. So, again, this is, you know, 1999. Now obesity research is like in full swing. Yeah, no. Everybody and their brothers working on the same GPCR targets primarily. Yeah. I was asked to work on finding a small molecule to activate the leptin receptor. This was like Jose Caro's pet project. And, you know, that didn't work out. But along the way, again, I had some great medicinal chemists who just gave me great advice, also helped me learn the ropes of Eli Lilly, but also of drug discovery. But just also great colleagues in the endocrine group who I stay in touch with today. Just really good people, but also really good scientists. And we were all kind of, there was a younger group of us at the time, and we all were kind of like working on our own projects, but kind of learning the ropes together and figuring it out. So it was really just an exciting time. I started out in obesity and therapeutic area research. And had the opportunity to go down to the site at Lilly in Research Triangle Park. Cool. And this is where they were doing high-throughput screening. And I went there and I learned all about high-throughput screening. And this is where I became involved in the platform research that Lilly. Was really putting in place within discovery chemistry. So now I'm in the discovery chemistry organization and had some phenomenal mentors there, like Alan Palkowitz and Phil Hipskind. Many others. But again, it was just, I got to learn about high-throughput screening and automation and applied technologies. Doing that at scale, but also a platform-based approach for drug discovery, focusing on GPCRs and surface receptors or another platform focused on kinases. And it's just a drug discovery strategy. And they shut that site down after I was there for a year and a half. And that day, when the shutdown was announced, the VP of discovery chemistry pulled me aside and said, today, Chris, Don't worry, we have a management role that we want you to come back to Indianapolis and take being the head of lead generation biology. I had to think about it, right? My family had to think about it as well, moving back to the Midwest. But again, Lily just was phenomenal and made it worth my while, if you will, to come back. And I jumped into this role now where as the head of lead generation biology, that is everything that's like pre-project. To lead. So high throughput screening, lead generation, hit to lead. I was in this group called Quantitative Biology. But in the management role, I was responsible for supporting all, probably 40 to 50 projects across my team. Managing now a significant budget. Running around the campus like crazy, going to different meetings. And it was also in the heyday of outsourcing. So now we're outsourcing GPCR profiling, for example, and kinase profiling. And so we had a really strong relationship with SERP. At the time, you know, $15 million a year that we're spending on outsourcing. And as a whole initiative as part of the platform-based approach. And now I'm head of lead generation biology. I'm the platform leader on the biology side. And, you know, we're also looking at applied technologies in the screening area, but also in pharmacology and Six Sigma is kicking in. So I ended up being part of like 10 different Six Sigma projects focused on optimizing discovery research. But again, in all of that, right, this is just phenomenal multi-million dollar education and the ability to work with people that were phenomenal colleagues. Great mentors, as I mentioned, Alan Palkowitz and people like Phil Hipskin, medicinal chemist and great biologists, and just really gave me opportunities to lead and do new things.

Jon - 00:07:29: That is incredible because I'm still thinking about when you first got to Wyeth and it was like your three direct reports were like, how are you going to manage us? And then now it's just like, this is multifaceted. Can you talk a little bit about when people are making that or leaders are making that transition from kind of like smaller teams, smaller projects, what are like some key considerations when you start getting to that kind of like much, much more kind of coverage and surface area?

Chris - 00:08:00: Yeah, I mean, communication becomes so important. And even today, like, and I'm not the first to say this, but like when you think you've communicated enough, you probably haven't. You need to over-communicate and over-communicate. So communication of what are the goals? Why are we doing what we're doing? And roles and responsibilities, right? How are we going to get the work done? But also really having the team now understanding that intent, come up with the plan. But even more importantly now with a bigger team of, you know, 45 scientists, it's getting to know each one of them so that they can trust you, right? And you've got that rapport. And I was, again, very fortunate in the sense that people were really great and wanted to take the time to get to know each other. And I'd worked with several of them for many years already. But I would say building a rapport with people. Getting their buy-in, getting their trust, as you had said, like giving them the space, right, to do what they need to do. I'm not a micromanager by any means, but communication. And then on top of that, right, of course at Eli Lilly, but at many companies, right, they just had a great investment in people and particularly in their managers around training. Leadership training, you know, and the values that Lilly about respect for people and excellence and integrity were instilled in that leadership training. And they didn't overdo it, but there was, you know, sort of no shortage of that leadership training opportunities that, you know, really gave you an opportunity to meet with leaders within the company. And put your training into practice.

Jon - 00:09:31: That's awesome. In my head, I was like more fist pumping. I was like, because I was like thinking about how. At least for me on a far smaller scale than. Eli Lilly, but as the team starts to get bigger and bigger, and just knowing each of your teammates kind of like own work style and personal preferences. And, and like, I think it's easy to just like try to manage by a spreadsheet. But that's not how humans work. Like we're not just numbers in a spreadsheet. And you really need to take the time to kind of gain exactly you said gain the trust, the rapport, and just learn what gets them kind of energized, what gets them tick, like how they tick. And you know, some folks, you know, I always think about it, like in meetings, how some folks are much more comfortable voicing their opinions amongst large groups versus some people who that's not my forum of that's not how I and making sure that everybody in their own way can contribute, even though if it's stylistically different, that critically important, because I think if you don't, if you just treat everyone like everyone communicates this way, you're going to have people who are just on the sidelines, and you know, probably one outspoken voice over the others.

Chris - 00:10:48: Yeah, I think the other thing too in discovery chemistry at Eli Lilly, the leadership was very clear about what we were going to deliver. How we were going to do things, how we were organized. And so they're really, it wasn't sloppy, right? It was, they led the way they wanted their leaders to lead and it just carried down. And there was just this phenomenal tradition of the company as well that everybody, you know, started to bleed red, Lily red, right? 

Jon - 00:11:16: Yeah, totally. And so you're head of lead generation biology. I know for a moment you were at Merck, and then also you ended up back at Eli. Can you talk a little bit about that phase for you?

Chris - 00:11:27: Yeah, it was, again, sort of family related. Like, let's get back to the East Coast. And when I was leaving Eli Lilly, sat down with two vice presidents and said, and they said, Chris, look. We understand, right? You've got to do this for your family, but we're not done working together. Yeah. So you go do this thing, but we'll be in touch. And again, it was phenomenal. And going to Merck, you talk about different cultures, right? Yeah. Again, Merck, a company steeped in phenomenal history. And. Advancements for humanity from a medicine's perspective, but a culture that is very clear about what's in and what's out. And the scientific rigor is certainly high at Lilly and it's high at Merck, but there was just an element of management style that was, let's say, a bit more confrontational. But it just gave me an opportunity. I was in this, again, this lead optimization group. I really appreciated that sense of like understanding what's in and what's out. And it was very clear. And I really enjoyed my time at Merck, even though it was brief, you know, 18 months or so. But I had also the opportunity, again, was asked to lead a project in the Alzheimer's space when there was a gap in leadership. And they said, Chris, we'd love you to become the project leader and take this on. And again, it just became a great opportunity for me to not only try to help lead that team, but also. Learn from the phenomenal people around me at Merck around how they drug discovery and how they talked about the company and um so i just kind of soaked it all in But eventually, you know, got a call from one of those VPs at Eli Lilly. And said, we're building this Open Innovation Drug Discovery Program, among other things, and we'd love to have you come back. And it worked out for me because I've got four kids now, and being in the Midwest was just a really great place to raise kids. And also, Lily had certainly had a track record of being a great place to be. I never left Eli Lilly because I wasn't happy there. It was always kind of family-related, geography-related. So I went back, and it was a bit funny coming back, like, oh, you're back again. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, had a great opportunity again with Alan Palkowitz to build out what eventually became this Open Innovation Drug Discovery Program. Back in Quantitative Biology in the management role. It was just great. And then eventually Eli Lilly bought Imclone. And so now we have labs in New York City on the East Coast. There we go. I was like, aha.

Jon - 00:13:57: Yeah, there we go.

Chris - 00:13:59: Back to the East Coast we go. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting how it all went down. Initially when I... Talked to my immediate management. Were like, yeah, we don't see it. Like, yeah, I don't think we're going to do it. We're not going to go down the road of trying to move you, get you over there. So I reached out to the management at the New York site, which was probably uncharacteristic for me, but I did it. I'm like, Hey, I got to do this. And they're like, yeah, we'd love to talk to you. And, and also they were like, Oh, I'm actually with one of your colleagues right now. And they say, yeah, we have to get you out here. You're amazing. Which was, you know, I was grateful to hear that. But I really, you know, Greg Plowman was the head of the New York site, a phenomenal drug discovery scientist. Again, another great mentor as I look back on things. And he was like, yeah, we'd love to have you here. And Eli Lilly, to their credit, again, moved the Moxham family across the country. And I started working in the New York site. Imclone. Antibody discovery. I really know nothing about antibody discovery. I'm in the oncology therapeutic area. I'm not an oncologist by training, but I'm a pharmacologist and I've been doing this drug discovery and started. So Greg had asked me to build out a translational group looking at biomarkers and using applied technologies in that space and started doing that. Got to work on the ADC program and we took that into the clinic. But over time, started to kind of from the ground up, build the idea of like we should have a Quantitative Biology for antibody discovery. And I can tell you that was not a popular idea among the colleagues in New York. So I just slowly tried to work with people to get them to see why we should be able to do this. Right. And how it would make things, you know, we'd have, I think, more quantitative data as well as we could use automation and really ramp things up and apply it both in the automation space. And. As it turned out, the Lilly in the New York side, we were looking to expand. And so I had the opportunity to... Lead the build out. Of this new group in the adjacent building on this floor. And so now I have this whole new experience of like building out a $20 million project, designing the space with the facilities people, going through the whole experience. And creating this Quantitative Biology group for biologics and ended up also getting back into discovery chemistry process. And so it. Example for me there was like not taking no for an answer right and reaching out uh and it happened And then just having the resilience and the courage, I guess, to believe in your idea. And yeah, it was met with resistance initially, but just... Chipping away at it and getting people to see the value through examples ultimately led to something that, again, if you had said to me, oh, Chris, you're going to. Lead the build out of a 20 million dollar project in a floor in New York City for a new research lab for I probably wouldn't have said it yet. I don't think I'm doing that. Yeah. So it just was a great experience that, again, took me into the translational space. The world of biologics. Getting deeper into oncology. And then I got a call by a former Lilly colleague who was at Fulcrum, Owen Wallace, who was the CSO there at the time. Said, Hey, Chris, we're looking to hire someone to lead biology. Do you know anybody? And I said, actually, I'm thinking about moving on because I thought to continue to advance in my career at Eli Lilly would probably mean a trip back to the corporate center in Indianapolis. And I'd already done that experiment a couple of times. Yeah, yeah. And also I had colleagues, you know, saying you should go into biotech. You'd be really great at it. And so I joined, had the opportunity to join Fulcrum. And It was great. It was just being in a smaller company. It was probably 50 people at the time when I joined. Great leaders, a great mission in rare disease and small molecule drug discovery. But also just getting exposure to the board of directors and presenting there. You know, certainly wasn't getting a lot of that at Eli Lilly, right? Yeah. Seeing the strategy of the company, but also really just now. And that opportunity, seeing how the investors in the company. Really talked about value creation and what it meant to them and holding your feet to the fire, if you will, in terms of delivering and value creation. In a bigger company, you don't spend a lot of time thinking about cash runway ever, really. Yes, you have your annual budgets and you're usually building a budget on the assumption that the money's there, but also value, I think, had a different connotation, right? And with Fulcrum, Robert Gould is the CEO, a great mentor, a great person, really look up to him. He had spent 30 years at Merck, so well-steeped in drug hunting, very successful, but also just a great person and really very supportive of me. And great other folks as well, and great people on the board. The company went public. Which is a whole nother experience. And then over time, I became the scientific lead for the sickle cell program and then became the CSO of the company. And that really just gave me an opportunity to kind of. Design and build on the strategy for research. And it was just a great experience being in that type of role, certainly talking to investors a lot more as well. And even being a public company, we raised an additional $200 million on the public markets on the back of the sickle cell program. So I was always talking about that. So I really enjoy talking to investors, representing the company. So I have no regrets about making the leap over to biotech. I really love the dynamic environment of it. And really grateful for my time at Fulcrum Therapeutics. And then we just kind of started to get into 2021. I think people started to see that the biotech markets were going to get tough. And we had two clinical-stage assets and that, you know, might have to dial back a bit on investment in research. And it was also there that I had like this aha moment where I was like, I think I could go build a drug machine to interrogate not only rare diseases at scale, but also have this, you know, basically like a pipeline foundry that could be churning out projects on the ability to intersect the druggable target space with the transcriptome. And with technology and compute, you could do that both in terms of a wetland. As we started to do a bit at Fulcrum, but also the idea of I could train a machine learning system that would learn the chemistry rules to tune gene expression for therapeutic benefit. And so I felt like it was probably a good time to move on from Fulcrum. Again, very grateful for my time there. And came to what was Rarebase at the time, a company that was founded really with, again, a very noble mission to repurpose FDA-approved drugs for rare diseases. I came with this mission of building this drug machine to do that. But I was also starting to speak up and say, look, you know, this is a normal thing to do. Not sure how much of a business model we can create of just repurposing FDA approved drugs. There's a lot of innovation we're leaving on the table. And if we could partner with pharma and biotech companies and build out the engine that I had in mind, we could be a really valuable company. And just over time, as the CSOs, we started to build out the platform, talking more with the board and things like that. It just became a very... I would say is natural and just a timely transition for me to become the president and CEO of the company. Still very friendly with, you know, the co-founders of Rarebase. But I really came here with this founding vision of building this truck machine. And we're a very different company today. And we changed our name as well, because I didn't want us just to be pigeonholed into rare disease only. We're still very focused on rare diseases, importantly, but it's not just rare diseases that we have an application in. And this is the best job of my career because I think it really is the culmination of everything I learned in the context of drug discovery and drug hunting, as well as on the business side and the leadership side. I'm not done learning by any means. But I'm really enjoying it. 

Jon - 00:22:18: That's awesome. And there's like a million directions I want to go. So sorry if I'm going to blow you in a bunch. So I guess the first thing, one observation is that I think everyone can take a page out of Eli Lilly's book on recruiting. Like Jose just like leaving the message and people just like. Sometimes I think when it comes to recruiting, you can kind of, you can be a little bit shy about it. But I think what Eli literally is showing is that sometimes it pays not to be shy about it and to say, kind of just be clear about how passionate and how much you want a teammate to join. And clearly, clearly it works. Because people want to know that they're wanted. It's not just like, especially if you're recruiting, if you've worked so hard to get them to the point of an offer letter, why hit the brakes then? You should probably just keep going. So that's really, really interesting to kind of hear that even a big company. Usually I would think a big company is like, well, everyone wants to work here because we are incredibly successful. So why wouldn't you?

Chris - 00:23:25: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, to his credit, Jose Caro is a very passionate scientist and very passionate about his people. And so I think it had a lot to do with him as well. Just he's not one to let go. And, and again, to this day, I'm really grateful for the opportunities that Jose gave me. And, um, know, just a phenomenal person.

Jon - 00:23:47: That's so cool. I'm actually very intrigued. I wanted to double click on the New York $20 million, just like the build out. Can you talk a little bit about like, what were some of the hard stuff? Like the challenges and triumphs of that experience? Like what was like surprised you which was like, this is incredibly hard.

Chris - 00:24:07: Designing the lab space wasn't that hard, right? And the office space, right? It was actually exciting, right? We're going to have all this space and we can do these things. It was more coordinating, frankly, with the construction crew. You know, just to keep things on track. Yeah. And, you know, we had this, you know, ultimately when we wanted to open, right? And we're spending a lot of money and... We're buying capital equipment. We're going to have equipment delivered. And. Again, I was very fortunate to have a person working with me on the facility side who was phenomenal. But just... I have to admit, there are times I was like, why can't we get the floor drain put in properly? Yeah. Why is it taking so long to actually? Put in that floor drain that's holding up everything. So I think it's just a level of coordination that had to occur. I think, I guess the other, you know, at the very beginning of it. There was some politics around who was going to have what space. And I'll admit, you know, I was becoming protective of, you know, what space my group was going to have relative. But it was also just a matter of like, look, we're all in this space together, if you will. And we're going to make it work. And we're going to build something that really is state-of-the-art that's going to be valuable for the company.

Jon - 00:25:22: Very cool i love i was like just like coordinating the construction was like yeah

Chris - 00:25:26: it just um again they you know i give them credit like but just there were moments it was like like do we not understand like if we just put in this one thing Yeah. We're going to be able to get this project over the line. It just seemed like the closer you got to the actual launch opening date. Yeah. Like it just little things seem to pile up. Like what, what are you talking about? Like, yeah. 

Jon - 00:25:49: Like how, how did this not get like, yeah. Like loose end got tied up yet. Like we're so close to actually just like ribbon cutting here, but yeah.

Chris - 00:25:58: So I'm sure there's, you know, some lessons to be learned there in terms of. Coordination and again, communication around. And I did have some moments with everyone like, look, we want to open on this date, right? We've committed to this now. What is it we need to do to get to there? Right. And we're all in this together, right? So how do we get this done? But there are just sometimes things that are truly out of your control in terms of how your partners operate because they're not necessarily part of the company, for example. But we ended up. Having a ribbon cutting ceremony for a state-of-the-art lab and space. And I'm really proud of what we did.

Jon - 00:26:34: That's super cool. And I guess the phrase I use internally at Exceders is like, making the trains run on time and just like that kind of like quarterbacking is so so critical it's not really like glamorous i think a friend of mine was like everyone wants to be a rock star but no one wants to do the laundry like sometimes that's all like you have to just do the laundry and just like get it done even though it doesn't like even as if it's as small and maybe not glamorous as it may be it could be that that holds everything up

Chris - 00:27:07: Yeah. And, you know, in this one, again, I also had to like report out on all these different facets of the project that were not like science related. You know, how are we doing on the build out over here and how's the budget coming along and the capital equipment? All these other elements and integrate that with other. Build-outs that were occurring within the division. And so there are times where we're sort of competing sort of priorities of which one do we want to do first. And so like anything, you know, it just, it has its complexities and you've got to navigate that through, I think, with kind of a level head, right. In a sense of the bigger picture to our earlier kind of discussion, like just stepping back and kind of looking around and not just thinking about, it's about the New York site and what we're going to deliver. There's a bigger picture here for the company. So again, just another, I think for me, great experience to grow in other ways and try to help the company.

Outro - 00:28:01: That's all for this episode of the The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion with Chris Moxham. Tune in to part three of our conversation to learn more about his journey. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening. And we look forward to having you join us again on the The Biotech Startups Podcast for part three of Chris's story. The The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for the The Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, https://www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.