A month after exiting from the microarray manufacturing sector, Incyte has signaled its intention to move further into the pharmaceutical arena by appointing a pair of big pharma executives to top positions. Paul Friedman, the former president of DuPont Pharmaceuticals Research Laboratories, is the new chief executive officer, replacing Roy Whitfield. Robert Stein, DuPont Pharmaceuticals’ former executive vice president of research and preclinical development, will serve as president and chief scientific officer. Whitfield will serve as chairman of the board of Incyte, and will succeed cofounder Randy Scott.
Friedman and Stein have both left DuPont Pharmaceuticals as a result of the division’s September 2001 acquisition by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Before he joined DuPont (then DuPont Merck) in 1994, Friedman served as a senior vice president of research at Merck, and prior to that as an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Stein joined Friedman at DuPont Merck in 1996, after a stint as senior vice president and chief scientific officer of Ligand Pharmaceuticals.
Friedman has indicated that Incyte’s genomic information database will continue to play a central role in its future, and that it will harness this database along with its portfolio of gene and protein patents and its scientific teams to “lead this new paradigm of therapeutic discovery efforts.”
With this change in management naturally comes a rethinking and refining of strategy. The company said it will present these strategies during the first quarter of 2002.