Neuromed deal just the beginning Company's $500 million licensing contract the richest in Canada

This week the company he co-founded, Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, inked the largest licensing agreement in Canadian biotech history -- a deal with Merck & Co. potentially worth $500 million. The deal will see the painkiller NMED-160, the first drug to emerge from Snutch's research, headed towards commercialization.

It also sets the stage for the company to expand the development of its burgeoning product pipeline and puts it on track for an initial public offering within the next two years.

For Snutch, the science is clearly still not work: It's a passion. "It's not a real job I have," he said. "Science is pretty amazing in the sense you never get to the end. You find something out and it leads to the next set of questions.

"There is always going to be the opportunity to evolve what you have already discovered and develop it to the next best thing.

"I've never gone to work and done the same thing twice in any given day."

NMED-160 is in Phase II of the three stages of human tests required for regulatory approval and if the tests go well, the drug could be on the market by 2011. Drug approvals are by no means a sure bet, but if successful NMED-160 could emerge with a huge head start against competitors in its class in a market worth $28 billion US a year.

NMED-160 had its start in Snutch's lab at the University of B.C. where, in the early 1990s, he cloned the N type calcium gene that would become the target of drugs Neuromed would go on to develop.

"This is probably one of the few examples where the faculty member has actually cloned the gene that becomes the target for the drugs. We filed patents and did it all the way through," said Snutch, who is vacationing in the Cook Islands with his wife, UBC scientist Mary Gilbert, and their seven-year-old son.

For Snutch, who took out a line of credit on his Vancouver home to help fund Neuromed's start, the deal is particularly sweet because it leaves the company with a stake in NMED-160's future, as well as the resources to develop a promising pipeline that includes its second program in T-type calcium channels. That program is developing drugs for the treatment of epilepsy and cardiovascular disease.

"The amazing thing to me is you can have an idea at a university, go out and raise many millions of dollars and create jobs," he said. "It is very satisfying that people have moved to Vancouver from Europe, from Italy, from the U.S. and the U.K. to take jobs at Neuromed."

Even before the Merck deal was announced, Neuromed had venture capitalists ready to shower it with money. It recently closed a fourth round of financing of $25 million US, turning down an extra $25 million the VCs were offering.

The Merck deal will allow it to create more jobs and Snutch expects scientific staff at the company's research and development headquarters near the UBC hospital to double in the coming year to 100.

A graduate of Sardis secondary school in Chilliwack who completed his undergrad degree in less than three years at Simon Fraser University (where he went on to do his PhD), Snutch was the first scientist in the world to describe the molecular basis for calcium channels in the cardiovascular, endocrine and nervous systems.

His arrival back in British Columbia from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he was a post-doctoral fellow, was thanks to Michael Smith who recruited Snutch as a professor to join him at UBC.

Smith, winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1993, had started the biotechnology laboratory at UBC that now bears his name. The Nobel laureate, who died in 2000, tracked Snutch down at his parents' home during Christmas holidays

While Snutch's mentor at Caltech, molecular biologist Norman Davidson, was encouraging the young scientist to go to Harvard, Stanford, MIT or another prestigious U.S. school, Smith's persistence paid off.

Out of Snutch's UBC lab grew compounds designed to selectively target the calcium channels -- in the case of NMED-160, an oral calcium channel blocker that can kill chronic pain. The drug works by blocking N-type calcium channels, preventing the pain signal from being sent.

This week's announcement of the deal with Merck is only the latest in a string of credits accrued by Snutch.

The successes date back to his birth in what was then Preston, Ont., a town that bestowed upon him the honour of being its 10,000th citizen -- the magic number that would elevate the town to city status. Snutch's parents got a $100 cheque from the city -- the equivalent of 10,000 pennies -- to mark the occasion. Terrance P. Snutch carries the commemoration of that event in his middle name -- Preston -- although the town has since changed its name to Cambridge.

"They wanted us to call him Preston, but my husband wanted to call him Terry, after Terry Sawchuk, the goalie for the Detroit Red Wings, so we called him Terrance Preston," said Snutch's mother, Betty. The family, including four boys and a girl, followed air force father Bob Snutch in a career that stretched from Labrador to Chilliwack.

David Baillie, a professor in the department of molecular biology and biochemistry at SFU, was Snutch's PhD adviser and the mentor who first piqued his interest in lab work.

Baillie first noticed the young science student in the 1970s when Snutch, along with Olympian Debbie Brill, took his molecular biology course. Snutch was hard to miss -- he was the guy who came to the first class wearing a rubber Einstein mask; his friend sported a Darwin version.

"I thought I had some clowns in the class but it turned out I had some very bright students," said Baillie.

In his accelerated race through his undergrad work -- he did eight semesters straight -- Baillie said Snutch was more interested in learning than in the university's measure of his academic success.

Baillie recalls a mistake in the reporting of marks that left Snutch with a C instead of an A, an omission that Snutch didn't even mention to his professor.

"Instead of getting the highest or second-highest mark in the class, Terry got a C," said Baillie. "When I saw him in the hall, I said, 'Hey Snutch, what did you think about the mark you got in my class?' He said, 'If that's what you think I deserve, that's what I deserve.' "

"So I said to him, 'It was a mistake, you got an A.' He just said, 'Okay' and kept walking."

Gerald Zamponi, professor of physiology and biophysics and Canada Research chairman in molecular neurobiology at the University of Calgary, did his post-doctorate work with Snutch. Zamponi's lab in Calgary works on a research contract with Neuromed.

While many scientists are caught up in the very narrow focus of their particular research, Zamponi said Snutch's strength is in his ability to see the broader picture.

"He doesn't just think about a molecule, he thinks about its relationship to the whole physiology.

Interestingly, if you ask Snutch where the stresses are, he doesn't talk about pitching his work to venture capitalists or fretting that tests will fail. He worries about mentoring the people learning under him.

"When you start an academic lab, your first job is to manage people, not to do the experiments yourself," he said. "It can be stressful when their experiments don't work. Your first thought is to get in and do the experiment yourself, but you have to step back and help them and tell them how they can do it again."

Still, he juggles two jobs -- his academic lab and running a company. Even on weekends, he is back and forth from his home near UBC to his lab, in between soccer or baseball games with son Nicholas.

Neuromed got its start when Snutch went to the UBC's University-Industry Liaison office for help with a contract he had with a company. Natalie Dakers took the case in hand and ended up leaving the university to join Snutch in starting the company.

"I did that largely because of Terry," said Dakers, who remains a stakeholder in Neuromed but had to give up her position as chief executive officer when venture capitalists from the U.S. insisted on a U.S.-based CEO.

"The thing about Terry is that he is very smart and he just does smart science."

gshaw@png.canwest.com

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A BIG IDEA MAN

Terrance Preston Snutch, PhD, FRSC, is the driving scientific force behind a drug deal with Merck worth a potential $475 million US. Here's a bit about his background:

Born: Preston, Ontario, 1957

Lived: With father Robert, mother Betty, three brothers and one sister at numerous Canadian Forces bases including Goose Bay, Labrador, and Chilliwack where he graduated from Sardis secondary school in 1975.

Educated: Completed a Bachelor of Science at SFU in 1979 and stayed to do a PhD with professor David Baillie in the newly developing field of molecular biology from 1980 to 1984.

Post doctoral studies: California Institute of Technology with a pioneer in molecular biology, Norman Davidson.

UBC work: Returned to Canada to take a faculty position at UBC in Michael Smith's newly created Biotechnology Laboratory, since renamed the Michael Smith Laboratories in honour of the Nobel laureate. Hired to help bring molecular neurobiology to UBC; has cross appointments with the departments of psychiatry, zoology and most recently, in the Brain Research Centre.