from >>cached<<
[Still doesn't answer the questions, although it appears Venter counted on Chambre to build the drug discovery business at Celera (in as much as he claims some credit for the axyxs acquisition); or was Ordonez getting more airtime; or did Venter just not let go soon enough. Not sure I understand the ref to Chambre being the head of a drug discovery firm in the UK.]
Venter out at Celera as mission changes
Genome sequencer seeks leader skilled in drug research
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By Julie Bell and Michael Stroh
Sun Staff
Originally published January 23, 2002
J. Craig Venter, the brash scientist who gained international fame when his upstart Celera Genomics Group sequenced the human genome, has left as the company's president as it seeks a leader better equipped for its new mission focused on pharmaceuticals.
A number of analysts greeted Venter's departure as a positive for the Rockville-based company, saying Celera's mission as a discoverer of drugs and diagnostics is far different from when Venter co-founded the company in 1998 and led its sequencing efforts.
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"Since the formation of Celera, I have remained committed to doing whatever is needed to advance the business as quickly as possible," Venter said in a statement. "We are now at a critical juncture where my best contributions can be made in a scientific advisory role, allowing the rest of the organization to continue Celera's progress toward becoming a successful pharmaceutical business."
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But some who know Venter wonder whether he may have grown weary of the daily grind of running a company now that the race to sequence the human genome is over. In sequencing, scientists used data-crunching computers to help them spell out, in order, the more than 3 billion bits of DNA found in the nucleus of every human cell. The achievement has been compared, in terms of its scientific significance, to the completion of the periodic table of the elements.
"Perhaps this wasn't his bag. Perhaps he's looking for new worlds to conquer," said Victor A. McKusick, a genetics pioneer at the Johns Hopkins University who sits on Celera's scientific advisory board.
McKusick, who said he saw Venter several times at board meetings and scientific conferences last year, said he thought the Celera chief "seemed a little bit depressed" the last couple of times he encountered him. But McKusick said neither Venter nor anyone else said anything to indicate that Venter might be leaving. The first McKusick learned of the departure, he said, was in an e-mail yesterday morning.
"He's a very able guy, full of ideas," McKusick said. "I'm sure this isn't the last we've heard of Craig Venter."
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By last summer, White and the company's directors had embarked on a plan to make Celera more profitable in the long run by using its genomic databases to discover drugs and diagnostics itself. The board formed a new division, Celera Diagnostics, and brought in former Roche Molecular Systems President Kathy Ordonez to head it. Celera also announced in June that it would acquire Axys Pharmaceuticals Inc., a South San Francisco-based company with expertise in identifying and testing drug candidates in the laboratory. And Celera continued to develop its own protein "factory" in Rockville, part of a program to discover and characterize proteins important in fighting disease.
But, despite Celera's focus on discovering drugs and its plan to work with existing pharmaceutical companies to develop them, it did not have anyone in its leadership ranks with experience developing drugs.
"We have been getting questions from Wall Street about our credibility to be a drug discovery firm when none of us had expertise to do it," White said.
The issue came to a head after Celera' Chief Operating Officer Peter Chambre, formerly the head of a United Kingdom drug-delivery company, stepped down in October after little more than a year. Venter told analysts during an earnings conference call then that the company planned to beef up its management team by adding people with biopharmaceutical experience. It has since hired former DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. executive David Block as chief operating officer of the company's therapeutics business.
But even as recently as 10 days ago, Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Aaron Geist said he got no hint that Venter believed his own departure was imminent when the two men sat down for about an hour during Geist's visit to the company. White said he and Venter had a number of "frank" conversations last week about company management. Wednesday night, as company executives and directors had cocktails at a Rockville area hotel, White said that Venter approached him in a hallway to briefly say he thought stepping aside might be the way to go.
"Celera ... was founded on a platform of accelerating the sequencing of the human genome, and Craig Venter helped them bring that about," Geist said. "Clearly, Celera is becoming a drug discovery company."
Venter, he said, is "better suited to the business model they had previously."
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