Biotech startup Wheeler Bio has announced Patrick Lucy, an industry veteran with more than three decades of experience, to lead the company as its new CEO.
Lucy said he’s joining the company, launched in 2021 by Jesse McCool and Christian Kanady, during an “exciting time in their growth trajectory,” and the team has built a strong foundation in a short time with the support of its investors.
“I am confident that Wheeler and the Oklahoma biotechnology ecosystem are well-positioned to support both clinical and commercial-stage biotechnology production, establishing it as the next major biotechnology cluster in the U.S.,” Lucy said in a statement earlier this month.
Lucy is well aware of the ongoing biotech explosion, likely because he’s been involved since the start of the industry’s rise in the early 90s.
He got his start in the industry at Repligen Corporation in 1991, spending half a decade involved in quality control before heading to New Hampshire to work for what was Celltech Biologics, now Lonza, to work as a capital project manager and biochemistry supervisor.
His next stop was a small CDMO similar to Wheeler Bio that was quickly acquired by the Dow Chemical Company in 2001. It was there where he found a technology that could be used in the biopharma industry.
“I convinced Dow to allow me to build a business around that technology, and then spun that out of Dow in 2009 through a Series-A investment as basically a venture-backed biotech company. I built that business up over about five years and took it public in 2015,” Lucy said.
Lucy said once they got their drug approved, they sold the company to Ligand Pharmaceuticals for $516 million.
The Boston native most recently served as President and CEO of RoslinCT U.S., formerly Lykan Bioscience, another contract development and manufacturing organization that provides services for companies developing cell-based therapeutics. After taking the company to launch, he helped to orchestrate its sale to London-based GHO Capital.
While Lucy can probably name a number of similarities between Wheeler Bio and other companies he’s led, he said it was a conversation with Kanady several weeks ago that revealed the altruistic motive that makes Wheeler Bio special. He said the lead investors, Kanady and Errik Anderson look beyond the potential monetary value of the company.
“They’re not just trying to make money,” Lucy said. “They’re also trying to do something unique and good for patients and build another economic pillar in Oklahoma.”