Starting out with a decade of a successful academic career searching to understand the mechanism of diseases, Gerard Drewes is now Senior Director at Cellzome, part of one of the largest pharma companies. He still pursues his interests, applying and developing –omics technologies, and continues to actively contribute with high impact to the scientific literature.

Why are you active in the field of quantitative biology?

As a chemistry undergraduate I became fascinated by the biochemical principles of life. So, working in the area of chemical biology allows me to apply my training to my interests. Chemical biology is a growing field, with increasing relevance for the discovery of new drugs, which obviously has great societal impact.

Describe the most intense moment of your career.

This was when I decided to leave academia to perform research at a small biotech startup.

Which is the best idea you ever had?

Not sure I ever had a great idea just by myself. The best ideas often originate within a group of people who share passion for science and like to challenge each other. The ideas of the early team at Cellzome on how to use mass-spec based proteomics to identify drug targets in cells proved pretty impactful!

Do you have a role-model or a driving force?

Not sure I ever had a great idea just by myself. The best ideas often originate within a group of people who share passion for science and like to challenge each other. The ideas of the early team at Cellzome on how to use mass-spec based proteomics to identify drug targets in cells proved pretty impactful!

The philosophy along which lines you lead your group?

Stay focused and make sure you ask the right questions! And: never compromise on quality.

Pick a paper you praise for the elegance of its demonstration.

Watson and Crick, Nature 1953. OK maybe that’s too obvious. The recent paper by a Novartis team about the mode of action of SMN splice modulators is a tour de force in chemical biology.

Can you shed light on the relevance of inter-disciplinarity for scientific breakthroughs?

Scientific research is ever more complex, both in terms of the complexity of available technologies, as well as the sheer amounts of data. Chemists and biologists may be good at posing key questions, but without engineers, physicists, and statisticians they won’t get the answers!

Define research with just three words.

Challenge, humility, satisfaction.

How do you match the words beauty and science?

Science deciphers life, life is beauty.

A piece of advice you’d like to give to the young generation of researchers?

Go after the big questions that truly and deeply interest you. If it is for the money, you should probably do something else. And – be wary of advice 😉

A book, song, poem, music or painting that you spot out and get inspiration from?

Judson’s The eighth day of creation: makers of the revolution in biology.

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Gerard Drewes is a Senior Director and Head of Chemical Genomics at Cellzome, a GSK company. He holds a MSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Heidelberg and conducted his Habilitation in Hamburg (1999) with Prof. Eckhard Mandelkow at the Max-Planck-Institute, where he studied the mechanisms of tau phosphorylation in Alzheimer’s disease. In 2000, Gerard Drewes received a lectureship in Biochemistry from the University of Hamburg. Supported by a fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program, he was a Visiting Scientist in the lab of Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse at the Cancer Research UK. Gerard Drewes joined Cellzome in 2000 where he initiated an Alzheimer’s disease program which was later licensed to J&J. His current research focus is on the development of proteomics and genomics approaches to study drug action. He has authored more than 80 publications (h-index 42) including senior authorships in Science, Nature Biotechnology and Cell.