Leaders & Legends
Put the Patient First: Roy D. Baynes, EVP & CMO @ Eikon Therapeutics
Roy Baynes spent the first quarter of his career as a physician scientist — training in hematology, oncology, and stem cell transplantation, and eventually leading the bone marrow transplantation service at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit. The second quarter he spent in industry, holding senior clinical development leadership roles at Amgen and Gilead before joining Merck in 2013, where he served as Chief Medical Officer and head of global clinical development for nearly a decade. In this episode, Patty sits down with Roy — now Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Eikon Therapeutics — to talk about what drove that career and what he learned along the way. They cover the leadership principles behind more than 140 medicine and vaccine approvals at Merck, including Keytruda®; how Roy and Roger Perlmutter rebuilt Merck's clinical development organization from the ground up while simultaneously racing to develop what would become the best-selling cancer drug in the world; what it actually takes to build teams that execute at that scale; and how to know when to double down on a drug program versus change course. Roy also talks about what drew him out of retirement to join Eikon, and why — after fifty years — the work still feels urgent. The through line: focus on the patient, and the rest tends to follow.
