Sean Kelley surprised his friends and family when he decided late in college that he didn’t want to be a medical doctor after all. For years, medical school had been the plan, but as he was going through educational rotations and the application process, he realized that his true passion was understanding the biology of how the human body works.
He considered options for graduate school, but it was too late that year to apply for the following fall. So he took a detour onto a somewhat different career path — professional golf.
“My grandfather taught me how to play golf as a kid and I ended up being pretty good at it, even winning several tournaments in high school. So I left upstate New York where I grew up for Florida and got a job at a country club waiting tables at night, allowing me to play golf pretty much every day.”
For a year, Sean lived the dream – splitting his time between the links and the beach. But he quickly realized that the dream of becoming a pro golfer would never outweigh his scientific curiosity. So he applied to a Ph.D. program at his undergraduate alma mater, Penn State University, where he was accepted into the physiology department.
The Science of Medicine
Sean had always been interested in the details of how the body works. It excited him to understand how a muscle contracts or how a nerve functions – to investigate how the human body grows and repairs itself. Physiology as a field seemed to be an ideal fit.
Sean began his graduate research in a lab studying vitamin A and synthetic retinoids as potential anti-cancer agents. And as part of his research, he became interested in using mathematical modeling to describe how the body metabolizes, stores and utilizes vitamin A. This later evolved to developing mathematical models to describe other things like thyroid hormones and iron metabolism.
His graduate work led to a prestigious Fulbright scholarship at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, where he continued to pursue research in mathematical modeling and how certain environmental toxins impact how vitamin A is metabolized. After a little over a year in Scandanavia, he returned home in 1997, completed a second postdoc at Penn State, and turned his eye toward a job in biotech.
“I had a few options. But it was around this time that my grandfather, with whom I was very close, became sick and eventually died of cancer. It really drove me towards industry and a company focused on making cancer medicines.”
A Tough Business
In 1998, Sean began his career at Genentech as a pharmacokinetic scientist, applying the skills he’d developed during graduate school and as a postdoc. With his own small lab, the job allowed him to keep a hand in research as he helped move investigational medicines through the development process. His first projects were focused on new antibody therapeutics to treat asthma.
A few years later, Sean became interested in taking a more active role in the drug development process at Genentech, leading him towards a position in leadership. It was around this same time that he finally had the opportunity to work in oncology as the pharmacology sub-team leader for an investigational medicine that was designed to turn on cell-death signalling pathways in cancer cells. In the end, the molecule was not approved, but it was a tremendous learning experience.
“I learned that bringing early scientific discoveries all the way to patients requires expertise well beyond scientific acumen. A company like Genentech needs people who can wear many hats and be able to inspire teams to come together to achieve a shared goal. And when you’re in this position, you really need to like working with people and know how to connect with them.”
It turns out Sean was one of these people. He loved the leadership role and when Genentech created the project team leader (PTL) position, he was immediately intrigued.
“As a PTL you’re leading an entire drug development team. You have access to the whole picture from research to development to manufacturing to the marketplace, and it gives you a perspective on how complex it is. There’s never a day where you’re doing the same thing.”
Sean was hired as a PTL and has worked on a wide range of investigational medicines in oncology, including in the evolving world of immunotherapy. He’s led teams developing new approaches to attack tumor cells and personalized cancer vaccines, and is currently a Vice President of Project Team Leadership in Cancer Immunology. He says his proudest moment, though, was the day that Perjeta (pertuzumab) Indication and Important Safety Information was approved in 2012 for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.
“Developing a new medicine is hard. I’ve worked on a number of different molecules that never made it all the way to approval, and what it’s made me realize is that you really need to embrace the successes, because they don’t come that often. That was a special team, and it was incredible to see our work make a difference for patients.”
Some Things Never Change
Both Sean and Genentech have changed since the day he arrived in South San Francisco 19 years ago.
“I’ve worked here through many of the big milestones in my life: marriage, my first house, having my twin boys.”
Sean recalls the old days when you would have to fill out forms to get simple materials like test tubes and everyone in the company knew what projects other people were working on. While that’s no longer the case, Sean’s happy that Genentech’s agility and innovative spirit still allow the company the ability to pursue new treatments for the most challenging diseases.
There’s a local adage that’s been picked up around the halls of the company that still rings true for Sean. “We forget because we’re submerged in it all the time, but we continue to be on the cutting edge. People around here used to say, ‘We rewrite the medical textbooks.’ We really do.”
Sean Kelley is a Vice President of Project Team Leadership in Cancer Immunology at Genentech.