See the episode breakdown with time stamps below:0:00 – Cold open: the "unexpected collaboration" teaser0:35 – Growing up in Zimbabwe and an unplanned path into medicine5:41 – The "9-month detour" into pharma that turned into a 30-year career20:01 – Learning to lead: finance, business instincts, and the power of asking questions23:55 – Launching Gleevec — and the patients who make it all worth it31:21 – Taking the leap: becoming CEO of Millennium and betting big on Velcade39:41 – Layoffs done right: dignity, trust, and the "milk mustache" story49:57 – Inside the $8.8B Takeda acquisition and navigating a clash of cultures1:08:30 – Failure and resilience: Forum Therapeutics and a rocky start at Lundbeck1:22:48 – The $2.2B Alder bet, boardroom battles over share classes, and closing lessons on culture (plus the rapid-fire round) &nbsp;

She started out as a small-town GP in South Africa with zero idea a "biotech industry" even existed. Three decades later, Deborah Dunsire had led the launch of Gleevec — the first targeted cancer therapy ever approved — steered Millennium Pharmaceuticals through an $8.8 billion acquisition, and run two more companies through drug failures, board showdowns, and billion-dollar bets. In this episode, she takes us inside the moments that don't make the press release: a phase one cancer patient still alive today, decades after a drug nobody thought would work; a multiple myeloma patient who happened to be trial patient #007 and was actually named James Bond; and the $60,000 milk-budget cut that nearly tanked employee morale company-wide.

Dunsire doesn't sugarcoat the hard parts either. She walks us through the gut-punch of watching a phase 3 trial fail just weeks after taking the CEO job at Lundbeck, the sleepless nights of shutting down a company at Forum Therapeutics, and a boardroom fight over share classes that got her booed by public shareholders. Through it all, one thread holds: her conviction that treating people with dignity — during layoffs, acquisitions, culture clashes across continents — isn't just the right thing to do, it's the thing that actually builds winning companies.

This is a masterclass in building biotech companies from someone who's done it inside Novartis, Millennium, Takeda, Forum, and Lundbeck — with the scars, the wins, and the hard lessons to prove it.


Building, Breaking, and Rebuilding Biotech | Deborah Dunsire

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