by Babs Carryer
I don’t believe him, but I don’t want to disappoint him. “Gigi is riding me to get these numbers done.” I roll my eyes.
“I know, Brie. We all ask a lot of you. Just know that I’m here. If you need anything.”
Little does he know. He exits awkwardly out my door. He’s definitely older all over. His hands shake a little as he waves goodbye from the hallway. His steps going down the hall seem belabored, like he’s in pain.
I have a nasty email from Gigi to hurry up. I want to hurry myself. I have something else that I want to finish. I know that my work is not what she wants, but I email her the spreadsheet, knowing it will bide me some time.
Most of what I know about NGX is public information. I did a lot of research. I asked a load of questions. I put the finishing touches on a short overview of the company. I had told Stan that I would pass it by him for review prior to sending it to the detective. He’s showing wear too. I never noticed gray at his temples until last week. I guess we’ve all aged.
Report on NGX
Brie Prince
Quixotic, March 28
Overview. Neuro Phamaceuticals, the precursor of NGX, was formed in the late 1970s in Switzerland by a trio of scientists focused on groundbreaking discoveries for human health, including one who went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery of Phenomalia to treat breast cancer. The company is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, although it has research operations in Switzerland and Germany. The company went public on NASDAQ in the early 1980s based on its numerous partnerships with tier-one pharmaceuticals to take its pipeline of products to market. By the late 1980s, NGX had two products on the market, one for brain cancer and one for Multiple Sclerosis (MS). By 1990, the company was selling a vaccine for cervical cancer through its partners. In the early part of this decade, NGX had one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing operations in the U.S., based in Georgia, and was growing rapidly. In 2002, it became the third largest biotechnology company in the world by merging with Genex Labs, a Silicon Valley VC-funded, public company that developed and commercialized monoclonal antibodies. Genex’s first target was a treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The combined company, renamed NeuroGenex, or NGX, has expanded for the last 11 years and today has annual revenues of over $5.5 billion. Its stock price has almost quadrupled in the last three years from $62 to $246 today. The company prides itself on achieving its goal of discovering, developing, and delivering – to patients worldwide – innovative therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative and other diseases, including cancer. Recent efforts by NGX are targeting conditions including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Huntington’s Disease, and ovarian cancer.
Quixotic. NGX’s 2014 annual report mentions several ongoing trials for new drug candidates. The report does not mention Quixotic but does mention HD66 and the cancelation of the Phase III trial: “Our unyielding commitment to biomedical research that saves lives is reflected in our only clinically unsuccessful project of 2014. In March of this year, we discontinued development of HD66, a drug that was being tested in people with Huntington’s Disease (HD). We regret to say that HD66 failed to meet the necessary clinical endpoints in a pivotal Phase III trial, in both the general study population and in multiple subpopulations. Our search for a cure to this terrible disease will continue.”
Leadership. NGX’s CEO, Martin Stronghold, MD, PhD, is relatively new, having been there only five years, three as CEO. Stronghold had a relationship with Errol prior to our recent relationship around HD66. This relationship does not appear to apply to Quixotic or the rest of the executive management team. Dr. Stronghold used to be at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) at the same time that Errol was there, studying for his PhD. Dr. Stronghold was an associate professor, became a full professor, got his MD along the way, became chair of medical diagnostics, and then was awarded the deanship of the School of Health Sciences while Errol was there (six years). Dr. Stronghold left UMass the year that Errol finished his PhD – he was on Errol’s dissertation committee. He became chief science officer of a relatively early-stage company in Boston, named CodeGenetics. Apparently, he brought with him an invention that was licensed to the company from UMass. This licensing transaction appears to have been a relatively standard licensing agreement between a university and a startup, with the usual equity position and royalty agreement. Having obtained a copy of both the patent and the license, I note that the inventors listed on the patent include Errol’s dissertation advisor, Dr. Sally Mutase, but do not include Errol. There are no licensing officers currently at the UMass technology transfer office (TTO) who were there at the time of this license (1991), although they were able to pull the file electronically and send me the license agreement and a few side notes of the negotiations. It is difficult to decipher the exact situation, but there is a note from one of the two licensing officers assigned to the case (it appears that the first one may have left the university before the license was signed) indicating that there was conflict between Drs. Stronghold and Mutase about the license and the technology itself. However, there is no mention in the notes as to the details of the disagreement. We can presume that this situation was resolved, as the license was eventually signed.
Unfortunate circumstance. Shortly before the license was signed, Dr. Mutase was killed in a car accident. Newspaper articles about the death mention that she died on an icy road in the countryside, a half mile from her home in Pelham, a small town near Amherst. She was unmarried, no children. Newspaper accounts of the accident give no indication that it was anything but an accident. One article from the university paper, “MassUNews,” however, interviewed several folks close to Dr. Mutase, including colleagues and Dr. Stronghold. Quoted in the article, Stronghold expresses his “regret for the loss of a colleague and a brilliant scientist with so much to give to the world through her inventions and innovations.” Another junior colleague, Dr. Alise Freundenhofer, had very different comments, “Dr. Mutase was more than a scientist; she was involved in translating that science to the market following the principles of ‘consilience,’ where many approaches converge across the experiments to reveal something new. Dr. Mutase was on the verge of a very big deal. Her approach was not accepted by many. In fact, she was creating some turmoil in the field. I find it curious that her accident occurred now, just before a big publication that she was authoring and prior to closing an important deal with industry.” I have searched for the author of these comments but to no avail. I did find that Dr. Freundenhofer moved to Switzerland about five years after this article was written and conducted research at the University of Bern. However, there is no record of Dr. Freundenhofer in recent years. She has, quite simply, disappeared.
Dr. Stronghold today. Dr. Stronghold remained with CodeGenetics until it was acquired by Life Pharmaceuticals, which then merged with multiple other companies including Neuro Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Stronghold remained at the company through these mergers. In fact, when Neuro Pharmaceuticals merged with Genex Labs to form the current NGX, Dr. Stronghold was promoted to executive vice president, business development, of the combined entity. Subsequently, he was promoted to CEO in a major management shakeup that occurred three years ago. Most of the executives who were with the company prior to Stronghold’s becoming CEO are no longer with the company.
Questions.
The past: What is the nature of the relationship between Errol and Dr. Stronghold? While we don’t know the specific nature of this relationship, it can be surmised that it relates back to their time together at UMass. We know that Errol viewed this relationship in a highly negative way. Is it possible that there is more than just a bad relationship between Dr. Stronghold and Errol? That they were enemies in some way? I recommend that we investigate further, including talking with former colleagues at UMass, and an ex-employee from CodeGenetics, who is a CMU alum. In addition, I have contacted the former licensing officers in charge of the CodeGenetics
license through LinkedIn. While I cannot guarantee a response, I have found, in general, that this form of communication can be highly effective. I am continuing to search for Dr. Freundenhofer, who may have additional information that is relevant.
The clinical trial. Does the relationship, presumed to be a negative one, between Errol and Dr. Stronghold carry over to NGX? Is there a correlation between the fact that NGX licensed HD66 and that Errol and Dr. Stronghold were connected in some way? Did their personal negative relationship have anything to do with NGX’s cancelling the clinical trial for HD66? As I get answers to A above, this may shed light on these questions. What I can investigate is more about Dr. Stronghold and his role at NGX. He must have been involved in doing the deal with NGX. How? What was his role in the clinical trial? Did he stand to benefit or gain in any way through the success – or the failure – of the project?
The death. Is there a connection between Errol’s death and the relationship between Errol and Dr. Stronghold? Between Errol and NGX? What about between Quixotic and Dr. Stronghold? Or between Quixotic and NGX?
Recommendations. I intend to keep digging into Dr. Stronghold and NGX to find answers. If there is a connection, we will have to act on it before the trail gets cold.
…….
I push send on my email to Jim, Gigi, Matt, and Stan. I blind carbon copy Straler. I trust no one. Well, almost no one.
Chapter 30
March 29
My first call in the morning is to Amy. Did she know this Dr. Martin Stronghold?
“Yes,” Amy tells me. “I don’t know much, and I never met him. I never would want to after how Errol dissed him.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, Errol disliked him in the extreme.” Amy pauses to laugh. How long was it since she has done that, I wonder?
I join her with a small chuckle. “I know what you mean. I’m sorry for this Stronghold fellow.” I hear her sigh on the other end of the line. “Do you know why Errol disliked him? Or anything about their relationship?” I probe.
“There was no relationship,” she responds. “I mean, you knew Errol. Once afoul of him, there was no going back. The guy would have had to show up at our door with a peace pipe to even begin…”
“And nothing like that ever happened?” I pause. “To your knowledge?” I add. Silence. “OK,” I start, but Amy interrupts me.
“I didn’t know Errol in those days; that was his UMass career, and I met him when he came here to Pittsburgh, after his PhD. During his post-doctoral research studies.”
With his credentials, Errol could have gone anywhere. He stayed in Pittsburgh because of Amy. She was born and raised in the Squirrel Hill area of the city, just up the street from the universities. Errol had come as a post-doctoral fellow to Centre, a leading research university. Like many faculty, he found Pittsburgh to be an inviting home, friendly to scientists with its large university and healthcare base. Eds and Meds they call it. “Pittsburghers never leave here,” he once divulged to me. “The City doesn’t let you go. They think this is the greatest place on earth. And so you stay. Forever.” He gives a low chuckle. “Anyway, Pittsburgh is a great place to raise a family.”
Amy is still talking. “That was after his relationship with…” she stops abruptly.
Who was she about to name? And why did she stop? “I’m sorry to pry, Amy,” I say. “But these details, any information, you know, is helpful.”
“I know, Brie,” Amy says, and her voice sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “It’s just so hard.”
“It is,” I sympathize. “But I – we – need you. You were the closest to him, and what you have in your head is, well…” I trail off because Amy knows what happened in New York and why. She knows that it was sparked by her giving me Errol’s lab notebook. Before she can say anything, I jump in, “Amy, look, we have to do what we have to do. I can’t let this go, particularly now. The detective, well, he needs us.”
There is a long pause, and I hear her sigh, “I know, Brie. I can’t tell you how much I admire you, and how thankful I am that you’re there.”
“What I need to know is everything that you know about this Martin Stronghold,” I finish. “Can you think about this and then call me back or we can meet tomorrow?”
“Let me jot a few things down,” she tells me. “I’ll be in touch.”
I am about to hang up but stop when I hear Amy clear her throat. She speaks softly, “Brie? I got some information. About what you asked, about Errol’s travel.”
“Good,” I answer. “I didn’t get too far at the university. They wouldn’t give me any information. I‘ll have to go a more formal route to get any real information. Detective Henrik would have to lead that effort. But, I did get some success. I got the list of all Quixotic travel for Errol in the last few years. Most of it was domestic, and I suspect that the travel related to fundraising. Then again, Gigi wasn’t sure that it covered everything. It only covered what she could look back and find based on expense reports and reimbursements. It’s not a perfect system she told me. She might have been holding back, for Errol’s sake, somehow. I couldn’t get her to say anything more.”
“Hmmm,” Amy says. “Well, I was able to get into Errol’s computer at home. He keeps everything in the cloud. So, I took a look at his schedule of appointments for the last 18 months, basically since the dates that you told me about from the lab notebook.”
“And?” I ask. “Anything unusual or out of the ordinary?”
“Well, yes. He had several trips to DC. There are a lot of conferences there of course. We sometimes arranged to go together. We both love DC, and then, of course, there is the Chesapeake. Twice, we chartered a sailboat out of Annapolis and went for a long weekend sail before or after a particular conference. That happened in June and again in October last year.”
“OK, that’s great, Amy. What else?”
“Well, the rest of the domestic schedule looked pretty banal: San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle. There were two trips to New York City, but I know what they were. The Centre Pathways program put him through some training with Steve Nada and the National Science Foundation’s Innovation-Corps program; the onsite trainings were in New York. I went with him for one of them.”
“Great, Amy, what else?” I don’t want to rush her.
“I looked really closely for some international travel. I went back a little further. There was a trip to Russia two years ago. And there were two trips to Saudi Arabia this year.”
“Wow, Russia. And when were the trips to Saudi Arabia?”
“The first to Saudi Arabia was in late January; the second was just a few weeks ago, just a few weeks before, you know…”
“February?” I ask.
“Yes, she said quietly. “I didn’t really know where he was going. He was kind of vague. This wasn’t unusual because we didn’t always keep tabs on the micro details. Sometimes it was too much for me to keep track of. You know he was tired in the last few months. I think that his schedule was grueling between the university, his practice, and you, Quixotic, I mean. It was starting to wear on him. I could tell. He was cranky. Errol just doesn’t get like that normally. This seemed new. I caught him a couple of times talking to himself in the study. Like he was arguing with himself. Like he had something that was eating at him. Maybe a decision, I don’t know. We’d talked about taking a month in Greece this summer. Without the kids. They would be busy at camp. I thought it would be good for him to get away.”
I remember that Errol’s kids are involved in CISV, Children’s International Summer Villages, a kind of camp around achieving world peace by starting with younger generations. How ironic is it that Errol had discovered something so deadly, and yet wanted to send his kids to a world peace camp?
Amy was still talking, “I couldn’t keep Errol’s schedule straight. It didn’t matter anyway. He always called, emailed, we Skyped. I didn’t need to know where he was. I’m the same. I travel. As long as we stayed i
n contact that was enough.”
The Russia trip has to circle back to Popov, I think. And two trips to Saudi Arabia? Right on top of each other. I know that they were not for Quixotic. They were certainly not for his medical practice. Could they have been for a conference? I’ll ask Dean Dormer about any recent Middle Eastern events or conferences.
Amy wasn’t finished. “Brie?” she asks quietly?
“Yes? Something else, Amy?”
“Not really something. Just a feeling.” I wait. “Those times when I caught him talking to himself, and a few other times, when I saw that he was looking at me, when he didn’t think I saw, well, I don’t know exactly how to describe this, but he had a guilty look on his face.”
I hold my breath for a few seconds.
“Guilty? How?”
“I don’t know, just guilty. Like he knew that he was doing something wrong. Or bad. He’s like Luna. She’s the only dog I’ve ever known who actually covers her face with her paws and looks guilty when she does something naughty.” She pauses, and then gives a small, sad laugh.
“How is Luna doing?” I ask to change the subject.
“Oh, she misses Errol. She misses him as much as any of us. She growled at his students the other day. They stopped by and the lovely young Indian woman was so terrified that she hid behind the others. We all miss him so much…”
The phone goes dead. I stare at my phone. She hung up? I haven’t moved from my kitchen table. The room feels hot. I am sweating.
…….
As I gather my things to make my way to the office, my thoughts turn to Errol going to Russia. The timing was such that he would only have just started working on a cure for Parkinson’s. No real data or anything. Nothing conclusive. But, come to think of it, I recall that Errol had given a couple of early talks about new things he was working on. I think that he partnered with a colleague. Myra or something like that, she was called. I’ll have to follow through on that.