Overview

Gender

male

Nick Lydon, Ph.D., is a scientific founder of Blueprint Medicines. Before founding his current consulting company, Granite Biopharma, LLC, Dr. Lydon served as vice president, small molecule drug discovery at Amgen. Prior to joining Amgen, he founded and led Kinetix Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of selective protein kinase inhibitors, a number of which are now advancing through clinical development. Kinetix was acquired by Amgen in 2000. Prior to Kinetix, Dr. Lydon worked at CIBA-GEIGY, in Basel, Switzerland, where he was responsible for the protein kinase inhibitor program. He and his team identified a number of protein kinase inhibitors. The most advanced drug from this program is Gleevec®, a selective Bcr-Abl inhibitor for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Dr. Lydon began his pharmaceutical career at Schering-Plough Corporation, where his research involved studies on recombinant alpha, beta and gamma interferons.

In 2009, Dr. Lydon was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Award for Clinical Medical Research for his work on developing Gleevec®, converting a fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition. Other awards include the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, the AACR-Bruce F. Cain Memorial Award, and the Charles F. Kettering Prize from the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation for his contributions to the discovery and development of Gleevec®.

Dr. Lydon earned a B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Leeds, England, and received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Medical Sciences Institute, University of Dundee, Scotland. His thesis involved research work on adenylate cyclase and cAMP dependent protein kinase. Dr. Lydon served as an advisor and member of the board of directors of Ambit BioScience from 2004 to 2009 and assisted in the development of AC220, a FLT3 kinase inhibitor in Phase 2 clinical development in relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML).