He runs a single drug through a battery of diseases at once - and waits for the surprise.
In a low building on Springdale Drive in Exton, Pennsylvania, a drug that failed at one job is being handed a stack of new resumes. Andrew Reaume's company doesn't invent molecules. It interrogates the ones that already exist - and listens for what they confess.
The idea is almost rude in its simplicity. Most of pharma spends a fortune building a new key for a single lock. Reaume took the keys already on the ring and started trying every door in the building.
He calls the work "picks and shovels" - the gear you sell to prospectors. It is a modest description of an immodest bet: that the next important medicine may be a drug we already have, tested for the wrong thing.
Melior Discovery is a contract research organization wholly dedicated to preclinical in vivo pharmacology. Its engine is theraTRACE, a phenotypic screening platform built from a diverse range of animal disease models spanning inflammation, metabolic disease, the central nervous system, oncology, and dermatology.
The trick is the word multiplexing - borrowed from electronics, where many signals share one channel. A repurposing candidate goes in; it is run across many disease models simultaneously, without compromising the data. Instead of asking "does this drug treat X?", theraTRACE asks "what does this drug treat at all?" and lets the animals answer.
When a phenotype shifts in a model nobody expected, that surprise is the product. It is the difference between guessing and discovering.
It's true that we are a 'picks and shovels' provider in the prospecting for new therapeutics, but we view ours as a critical mission - providing the preclinical proof-of-concept that warrants whether a candidate is worthy of bringing to human subjects.
ANDREW REAUME, ON THE JOBA kinase activator that emerged as a candidate for type 2 diabetes - a Lyn kinase activator and novel insulin sensitizer found through in vivo phenotypic screening, not designed for it from scratch.
The FDA cleared its IND in 2009. Two Phase 2 studies followed, involving more than 600 subjects across 80 clinical sites in two countries. In 2016, positive Phase 2a results landed.
The compound was licensed to Bukwang Pharmaceutical in 2013. Over the years Melior's methods drew in Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca.
The idea didn't arrive at Melior. It arrived at Pfizer, where Reaume was a senior business analyst in genomics and proteomic sciences. There, he conceived an initiative to comprehensively characterize genetically modified mice - to challenge a series of them with a drug and read the shifting phenotypes like a dashboard.
In 2005 he stopped pitching the idea inside a giant and left to build it. He co-founded Melior with Michael Saporito, raised the capital himself, and grew the company from a discovery-stage R&D shop into a clinical-stage enterprise. He also runs two spinouts, Melior Pharmaceuticals I and II, as President and CEO.
A geneticist who learned to read a term sheet. A dealmaker who can still read a mouse.
Reaume carries a PhD in genetics and a Wharton MBA - one credential for the lab bench, one for the negotiating table. He is, in his own framing, fluent in both phenotypes and partnerships, and he treats the handoff between them as the whole game.
Inside the company, the structure is flat. He favors employee autonomy and a bespoke, scientist-to-scientist style of working with clients. The culture shows: a reported 93% of Melior staff call it a great place to work, against a U.S. industry norm near 57%.
We try to, as quickly as possible, establish a scientist-to-scientist connection - to ensure prompt comprehension of the study requirements while respecting the budget and the clock.
ANDREW REAUME, ON CLIENTS