{"id":50690,"date":"2011-11-15T18:28:17","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T18:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=50690"},"modified":"2018-06-04T09:21:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T13:21:15","slug":"ceo-necn-cubist-bonney-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2011\/11\/15\/ceo-necn-cubist-bonney-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubist CEO Mike Bonney &#8217;80 talks about careers and superbugs with NECN"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New England Cable Network\u2019s business show <em>CEO Corner <\/em>interviews Cubist Pharmaceuticals CEO Mike Bonney \u201980, who shares his career path from drugstore manager to pharmaceutical CEO, and talks about the company\u2019s superbug-fighting products, including the antibiotic<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daptomycin\"> Cubicin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a \u201cnontraditional career progression,\u201d says Bonney, who chairs the Bates board of trustees.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.necn.com\/pages\/landing_styleboston?blockID=343584&amp;tagID=54079\">Video: Mike Bonney \u201980 talks about his career path from drugstore manager to CEO<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bonney tells host Peter Howe about his first job, managing a drug store in northern Maine. &#8220;I found I spent a lot of my time in the pharmacy asking the pharmacist, \u2018What\u2019s this used for, what\u2019s that used for?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_50923\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/bonney_d9346c1c05_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50923\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-50923 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/bonney_d9346c1c05_o-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/bonney_d9346c1c05_o-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2011\/11\/bonney_d9346c1c05_o.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-50923\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Board chair Mike Bonney &#039;80 presents a symbolic key to Roger Williams Hall to Spanish professor Claudia Aburto Guzm\u00e1n during dedication festivities for Roger Williams and Hedge halls. Photograph by Rene Minnis.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Then, Bonney took a sales position with a pharmaceutical firm that would become Zeneca, and \u201cpart of the interview process was a study guide, and we had to learn about the anatomy, physiology and biology of the systems that our drugs addressed. I liked that; I had started as a biology major [at Bates]. And I liked the people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bonney spent 12 years with U.K.-based Zeneca, \u201cand every 18 months I had a different role. It gave me a broad perspective on the industry.\u201d He became Zeneca\u2019s U.S. business director by 1994.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 1990s, the Massachusetts-based startup Biogen was anticipating the launch of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmedhealth\/PMH0000249\/\">Avonex<\/a>, a drug to treat multiple sclerosis. To build a national sales force, Biogen turned to Bonney. \u201cIt was a green field opportunity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Interviewing with Biogen, Bonney says that he \u201creally liked the technology, I liked the people and I liked the risk-reward nature of that business. I felt like I had some pretty good mistakes in me, and in that environment they were going to encourage that, to try new things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He held various positions at Biogen, including vice president of sales and marketing, before joining Cubist in 2002.<\/p>\n<p>For Bonney, career advancement has depended less on maintaining business networks than on \u201cnot being close-minded about where opportunity might show up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He explains how \u201cearly in my career at those two firms\u201d \u2014 Hannaford Brothers in Maine, then Zeneca \u2014 \u201cI was offered what would have been considered to be nontraditional opportunities. Many of my peers would have said, \u2018I don\u2019t want to do that,\u2019 because those jobs took you out of the silo\u201d of a traditional path.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said, \u2018This is an opportunity to learn something new, to have a new perspective on the business.\u2019 That has allowed me to develop a broader breadth of understanding of how our business works, how we interact with regulators and with physicians and patients, which ultimately has been very helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How does Bonney maintain that adventurous spirit?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI ask a lot of questions,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I am a lifelong learner and I love to learn new stuff. I will dive into any subject matter even though I have no reason to expect that I can learn it. And I try to figure out what it all means.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDepth of experience is important. But for my money, having a broad perspective on the world is more important.\u201d<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.necn.com\/11\/01\/10\/CEO-Corner-Michael-Bonney-of-Cubist-Phar\/landing_business.html?blockID=343582&amp;feedID=4209\">Video: Mike Bonney \u201980 talks about what&#8217;s in Cubist\u2019s product pipeline<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cubicin treats certain blood or serious skin infections, and is especially effective against bacteria that have become resistant to traditional antibiotics, specifically <em>Staphylococcus aureus<\/em>, which became endemic in many hospitals in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, Bonney has guided Cubist\u2019s efforts to \u201cbuild a pipeline\u201d of new products behind the highly profitable Cubicin, both by acquiring products that \u201cwe think we have the expertise to develop,\u201d and expanding \u201cour internal discovery efforts to bring our own products into human development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, Cubist purchased the startup Calixa, developer of the antibiotic CXA-201. While Cubicin treats Gram-positive bacterial infections, CXA-201 fights certain Gram-negative bacteria. \u201cWe believe these are the next wave\u00a0of superbugs,\u201d Bonney says. CXA-201 advanced into Phase 3 trials in August.<\/p>\n<p>Interviewer Howe asks Bonney if successful development of one drug makes developing another easier. \u201cIs it a replicable process?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s separate out discovery from development,\u201d Bonney answers. \u201cOn the development side, absolutely it helps\u201d to have successfully developed a drug. \u201cWe understand how to interact with regulators and what they want to see from an new antibiotic that has activity against resistant bacteria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn the discovery side, you\u2019re talking about an incredibly complex set of problems that you have to deal with. I\u2019m not sure that having one success means you will have a string of them. We have expertise, so we increase the odds, but finding new antibiotics, keeping ahead of the bacteria, is really hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cubist CEO Mike Bonney \u201980 shares his career path from drugstore manager to pharmaceutical CEO, and talks about the company\u2019s superbug-fighting product, the antibiotic Cubicin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":50923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,7,162,217,11009],"tags":[8840,11051,10834],"class_list":["post-50690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-alumni","category-health-medicine","category-science-technology","category-the-college","tag-bates-board-of-trustees","tag-bates-in-the-news","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50690"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93392,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50690\/revisions\/93392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}