The College Try

Former academic steers up-and-coming biopharmaceutical firm.

DAVID EWING DUNCAN

When Corey Goodman had a midlife crisis in 2000, he didn�t buy a Ferrari. Instead, he quit one of the most successful neurogenetics labs in the world, at the University of California at Berkeley, to plunge into the roil and toil of a new biotech company. He was 50 at the time, and his field was on the verge of turning brain disorder discoveries into useful therapies; Dr. Goodman wanted to follow the science into the commercial realm.

As a developmental neurobiologist at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, Dr. Goodman had studied the molecular basis of cellular structure, growth, and connections. He had discovered key genes likely to control critical aspects of brain development and to offer insights into neurological disease.

Dr. Goodman had flirted with the corporate world in 1994, when he cofounded Exelixis, but at that time he wasn�t ready to leave the university setting. “I was at a point in my academic career where I couldn�t close the chapter and move on,” he says. But he dove into the details of the genomics-based drug discovery company and found that he not only had an aptitude for business, he loved it.

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Steve Holtzman

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