 It's a great honor to now in a second hand it over to my my my long-standing and very good friend Mattai Momen who's the global head of R&D at Janssen who's going to be hosting a fireside chat with an individual who needs no introduction and really not just an icon but in many ways the icon of our industry and that's Roy Vagelos. So thank you very much Roy for joining us and Mattai I'll hand it over to you. Thanks very much. Thank you Andy. So I will now attempt to introduce the man that needs no introduction. We have the extraordinary privilege today of hearing from Roy. He's coming to us from his very lovely home on Martha's Vineyard. So just a bit of history Roy and I had the opportunity to meet at the founding of Theravants where Roy was our chairman of the board for many years and CEO for one and he was kind enough to receive a call from a young and somewhat naive but a pretty enthusiastic guy with some ideas for helping start that company and he's been a mentor to me ever since and that was 23 years ago in 1997. So to me Roy embodies integrity wisdom and just a remarkable confidence remarkable conviction. It's always proven worthwhile to listen very carefully to what Roy has to say and learn from him. Roy's had this uncanny ability to see with great clarity where things are headed what has to happen in order to achieve our mission. What our mission is and is not and he's been proven right over and over again. Roy's personal history is known to many of you and we'll go through some of that in the questions we'll get but just briefly he was born in Raleway as a son of Greek immigrants that ran a small restaurant in the shadow of a giant pharmaceutical company Merck and making sandwiches in that restaurant as a kid. I'm fairly sure that Roy or his family didn't quite realize that he would one day run that shadow casting company. He was a chemistry major at Penn graduating 70 years ago now in 1950. Got his MD from Columbia and was at the NIH for the next decade where he did some seminal work on lipid metabolism went to Wash U for another extraordinary decade moved to Merck in 1975 where he was considered one of the best leaders of all time of any business. He ran Merck research labs from 1976 and was CEO for a decade from 84 to 94. So the company under Roy was remarkable in its production of medicines that totally changed people's lives was a brand new way to invent medicines and affected billions of lives. But equally importantly to me and to all of us he did this with style with grace with integrity and Merck was literally the most respected company on the planet among all industries for years. So Roy now let's start chatting a little bit. We're in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic in which our industry is expected and I hope expected to develop drugs antibodies and vaccines to turn around this terrible situation we're in. But and and we're we have a fair bit of negative sentiment coming from society as a whole the government as we do this this noble thing. That's the setting in which we're speaking today. So first let's just start off with the basics. Tell us a little bit from your perspective of how you got started in your career. Tell us maybe a little bit about the experience at Merck. Yeah well the start was long ago obviously and you mentioned the fact that we had a small restaurant in Raleway New Jersey where I was a soda juror waiter etc. with our customers were largely Merck scientists and engineers. The excitement at that time was antibiotics penicillin of course I've been discovered long ago but was only available for a few years at that time and this is the early 1940s when I was interacting with these people and and so and my family had no knowledge of colleges or universities and so when it came time to go to college I talked with my friends who are our customers and they said I'll learn chemistry so I went to Penn as you mentioned and there I really fell in love with with the science but after after my second year started thinking what I would do with chemistry and talking with friends I decided to go to medical school and at medical school like Columbia I really became very much involved with patient care and the ability of doctors to affect a large of people and so I went from there from Columbia to the Mass General Hospital where again I worked with great doctors that was convinced I wanted to do that for the rest of my life but I needed to go to the NIH going to put in two years of service time because I had been deferred during the Korean War while I was in school and so I went to NIH, met Earl Statman, an outstanding biochemist who was willing to take on an MD as he said you know I've never worked with an MD and I said I've never worked with a PhD and so we agreed to work together for a couple of years and after that couple of years he convinced me to stay on because I would be a better physician when I finished becoming a real biochemist which I did it took me 10 years to to figure that out and after that I as you mentioned went to Washington U and taught medical students and graduate students and undergrads and then I was called by friends at Merck and they said would you consider coming to Merck to head up drug discovery? Now I had not thought about that at all at that point but they said you come and visit now you'll have a free ride back to Raleway and so that my parents were still in Raleway so that was okay and I went to Raleway and I noted that they were not using biochemistry in the way that they might in drug discovery and got working around the labs I noted much at live animal model modeling of disease and and very very brilliant chemist making chemical unrelated to any specific molecule and so I had the notion that if one could figure out what molecule is what enzyme iron channels cellular receptors might be involved in disease and get a chemist to make a structure that that would do something about that particular molecule we might be closer to drug discovery and they were anxious to try it because they had the idea they had run dry on the previous strategy for research some electric targeting sounded good to them and of course I'd never done it but I was but I had been now you know essentially 20 years in biochemistry and so I was very anxious to try to bring that biochemistry there on drug discovery and do something about human disease and so that's what we did and they went from one thing to another as you as you go into a new place how do you turn around a strategy and drug discovery and what I did was spend the first year visiting with every research group of course it was quite a large community group even at that time I walked around and tried to figure out what molecule could could be a target in this disease whether it's being metabolic diseases high blood pressure high blood cholesterol etc and so I worked with them directly and then I thought I should put my neck on the line too and so I had a friend who had been with me at NIH Al Alberts had been with me at NIH and then moved to Washington U and then moved to Merck and I had taught him biochemistry and he and he and I had worked together many years and then the first statin that went on the market in the world lovastatin and while that was that was accepted by the FDA when it was shown that it was effective safely lowering LDL cholesterol people really didn't much pay attention until we did that big out that outcome study called the PORS study with our second statin Simphastatin it was a Scandinavian Simphastatin survival study which was amazing because it enrolled 4400 patients who already had coronary heart disease and high blood cholesterol and treated a double-blind test of course with half the patients on placebo and half on on Simphastatin and they were followed until they had an appropriate number of events which was five and a half years and then broke the blind and they found that there was a reduction in death from in cause of 30% reduction in in death from heart attack 43% and reduction in strokes of 30% all these were of course statistically significant and very exciting and that one experiment revolutionized the treatment of coronary heart disease and of course hypercholesterolemia and at the same time it was the PORS for the laboratory to recognize that molecular targeting because we targeted HMG-CoA reductase of course and enzyme the limiting enzyme in cholesterol biosynthesis but that was the way to go and so that acceptance and recognition that it could lead to important drugs caused I would say a revolution also in the laboratory and people being willing to take this on and then the new drugs just rolls out because they're just waiting we had a new drug for glaucoma two new classes of antibiotics a new way to turn off hydrochloric acid stomach of drugs for osteoporosis it was just on and on new vaccines and so it was it was it was a very exciting time and it demonstrated to me that science is the the only way to get into something that's really important for health and and work with the ideal place to do it because the people we had there who were so terrific thank you Roy you you did indeed lead um you know a piece of thought there that was revolutionary that's target-based drug discovery that's really taken hold and obviously how all of the industry does that today I want to I want to turn to COVID right now we're in the middle of this crisis I'd love you to give us your perspective on the response by the pharmaceutical companies there seem to be both opportunities and watchouts and so what do you what do you feel about how the industry is responding well first of all I congratulate the industry which you know has been carrying a burden of people disliking us I congratulate them on taking on the challenge because there's no place that's just to be done as as it can be done in the biopharmaceutical industry so they've taken on all the challenges I mean and you mentioned them earlier and that is drugs antibodies vaccines specific drugs non-specific drugs etc and they're going at it all hard and I think that's terrific and that's what they do well they they jump on through opportunities and and they go like they compete that's just what you want and then I want them to compete I want them to make profit so I I think the that's a terrible terribly important part of our system and that is people are in fact incented by making more money that's not bad that's good because it brings in a certain kinds of people who have great drive and and so they've done that but a couple of things that I think they could do a little better one is not to not to talk so much about what they're doing of course announce what they're doing so people know that the mechanisms are being covered we don't want everybody working on just antibodies or just or just vaccines but we do want more than one on each class I would like to have you know three or four companies on each class to make sure that we're going to get the best products in the end and and so I I I think less chatter and and continue working like hell and focusing the the willingness to take government money bothered me enormously we never did that at Burt for one reason and that is we wanted to be independent of the government and we wanted to be independent in how we do it and also what we charge for our products and and so we we turned down especially for vaccines request by government to give us money and the it appears that almost everybody is taking some money from the government now why because obviously it reduces your risk and I can understand that but you also give up independence and and that I would not have done but but listen my my own company Regeneron has done it and I can understand and there's an argument on the other side but that's where I would be but I think the if anyone can be looked to to do something about this problem it's the biopharmaceutical industry as was shown previously with the HIV epidemic you know of course 1981 is when it broke and and for a couple of years without a known cause which caused the AIDS and then the virus was identified and then one one reaction of the virus after another as the virus was studied the retrovirus extusion retrovirus reverse transcriptase inhibitors the entry the protease inhibitors the entry inhibitors etc one after the other so that they could be combined to prevent resistance that was magic of our industry we took a disease that was 100 100% lethal and in relatively narrow group of people gay males and intravenous drug users and and and produced drugs for absolutely magical and converting a disease 100% lethal to a situation a chronic infection where people go back to work and live normal lives incredible now could we go further yes I think a vaccine would be better so people would not have to take drugs and and has the gut has the industry failed well no I say they tried like hell they tried very very hard to make vaccines the government pushed the industry pushed but the science wasn't there we just weren't ready to do that and so at some point you have to you have to stop and wait for the science to catch up and that's what they did but this was one instance one instance where where the ceiling was falling in everywhere I can remember when when government was trying to figure out how many more hospitals had to be built to receive the the onslaught of dying the HIV people and and and that of course was all solved by the industry now the price which is resented by some people I don't I don't know what it is they around 25 000 a year I say is a bargain a real bargain I mean we have pricing problems in in the United States maybe globally you might say but but uh some of our drugs are not only well priced some of them are under priced for what they accomplished if you can imagine about twenty five thousand dollars a year for someone who now is a taxpayer making fair amount of money may even be philanthropic as as they have as someone who had had the disease and so yes our our the industry is fantastic at what it can do so um I like especially your comment about less talk more action for for what we're doing hey so what when continuing with COVID for a second like so what one of the observations right now is that um individual governments especially wealthy governments are in fact partnering with companies giving them money either directly for drug development or for advanced purchase agreements for a vaccine or a drug when it when it gets created you know we the J&J organization Merck many of the global pharmaceutical companies are in fact global and we think of drugs that we're making for all sick people on the planet to treat or prevent illness wherever possible so maybe to shift a little bit can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on what our role is as an industry to treat everybody and not just um you know the particularly wealthy and I know that uh Merck is a long history in some of what it's done exactly along these lines well there are of course many ways for different situations and uh at this moment I would say what I see happening is that people are making deals among companies that are inventors and those that have capacity to to produce the kind of molecules that are being invented but the the ones that will be the most difficult the handle will be the uh biologicals the antibodies and the vaccines and and and those are being of course looked at by everyone so the capacity by having many companies come in means that we'll have I hope more than one vaccine more than one antibiotic and numerous new drugs coming along and so they will be it'll be spread throughout the industry and may the best man or woman uh better woman uh uh win win this race because there's going to be a huge market uh for this to be from what we're seeing and and this this uh virus is tough and continuing to take American lives and other global lives and so we really got to do it now so so the investments are being made uh the capacity is being built will it be in time I think if it's done rationally then I would like to see an international organization get together and say you know what do we what what do we have to do to cover global needs and and and and hash it out among the the people who who are right the players and come up with the plans but the uh and I think the world is ready for that I think locally people are perhaps our president but but the rest of the rational world is and and I think people are really thinking in those those terms I don't think anyone is looking at at this disease as a time that they're going to make a lot of money at killing and their new product this because the focus is on on having the drug what it can do safely and then what will be the cost and so the industry would be insane to a company to come up with an outrageous price I don't think that's going to happen I think the pressures on the fact that they are selling to the government and in some instances they're pre-selling before but they before they had the product they're making arrangements to give the first million doses to the government at a certain price the government therefore the the government is already a player and and so so we've given up the we've given up the idea of totally free pricing that the the government is going to be the negotiator and and they will see to it that the prices I hope right in giving an incentive a continued incentive for the for the industry as well as getting the product but in the past there are two instances that Merck stood out while I was there we had the capacity one was the one was the drug for river blindness as some of you may have heard about that that was a drug that was discovered by Bill Campbell leading the group he was our top paracetologist at Merck at the time a wonderful scientist wonderful person and who discovered ivermectin ivermectin is a drug that the target is is a ion channel it it gloms on to the onto the ion channel the chloride channel and excites it so that it's open chloride pours in to the nervous system and paralyzes the parasites and it does is exceedingly low low doses low concentrations and so it was a dynamite drug but it did not did not work with hookworms or tapeworms so it's not going to be used for humans it worked only it worked in all the gastrointestinal worms of animals and so it was developed as an animal drug until 1981 when a couple of Bill Campbell plus Muhammad Aziz a infectious disease doctor who had the notion that this drug might work in river blindness which is a parasite called unconservable vulgulous which is a worm that that is transmitted by a black fly that breathes along river banks and therefore river blindness this this this fly carries the micro fallaria the babies of this parasite go through the black fly he picks it up by by biting an individual with that parasite and then and then within the fly the parasite matures it goes into another person that's bitten it becomes a worm of about 12 inches long in the skin 90 micro fallaria that crawl all all through the body and then get into the eye into the eyes cause inflammation and blindness there were a hundred million people who were in jeopardy at that time and 18 million were going blind at that moment when we started working on this and then Muhammad Aziz went to West Africa took a bunch of patients gave them one tablet first of all took a pinch of skin counted the micro fallaria there were about 20 micro fallaria per milligram of skin and then he gave one tablet to a couple dozen of these people came back in the month took another pinch of skin looked under a microscope but there were none we called in the world health organization experts who came in looked at the data and they said you guys really screwed up I said what do you mean they said if you killed all the parasite the people would be unconscious from side effects because that was their earlier experience with killing the unencumbered convolvulus parasite and and so they walked out on us they didn't want to work with it so Merck undertook the program knowing that the patients were among the poorest in the world sub-Saharan Africa some parts of Asia, South America but a hundred million of them so Merck did a study which was done in Africa about a thousand patients where they counted the the micro fallaria in a pinch of skin at time zero then they gave everyone a tablet and and came back in one month three six nine 12 months each time counting the worms and there were no micro fallaria at one month three six nine at 12 there were very few and so it was clear that we had a drug that would that would work when given one tablet once a year and so we said wow now how do we get it to the patients and the of course the marketing people said they'd come up with a price that would be good well they couldn't and so we turned to governments and tried to sell it to the government they didn't want to buy it so I went to the U.S. government and met with John Whitehead who was deputy secretary of state at the time and and told him about this story he got very excited that Roy we're going to plant the American flag all over Africa I said yes John let's do it they walked out of his office and his assistant said Dr. Vagel that'd be great but you know we don't have any money I said we're talking about a couple million dollars to start the program he said we don't have it in the budget I said okay so we left then we heard from the French we had finished the studies and and the excuse me very we had a file that all over the world of course and not in the U.S. because there's no river blindness but in France they had people from French Africa with river blindness in Paris and so they were very quick to approve the drug we did not have a way to to get the drug out to the people at that moment so over the weekend we decided that and and and announced on the Monday the next Monday that that work would would contribute to drug free anyone in the world for as long as it was required and and I had no idea what we were getting into at that time but I but we had to do it it was the only thing we could do it was a bombshell within Merck the people just love the idea and among our stockholders it was amazingly positive I don't think we received a single negative letter but we received hundreds of letters at any rate so the program started 1987 and last year oh I didn't mention there's another another parasite that we discovered also is susceptible to to ivermectin and that is lymphatic filerizes the the bug that causes elephant eyes also can be controlled with one tablet once a year and so we put them all together so last year Merck treated free cash this 300 million people in one year 300 million people that's unbelievable and of course I've long I've been out of Merck for 25 years but that's the one thing that lasted and it's a fabulous program and then and we did quickly we did another program in in China after we had developed the recombinant the first recombinant vaccine in the world which was aimed at hepatitis B which causes liver cancer and liver disease we found that also that hepatitis B had an incident of 0.4 percent in the U.S outside in China the incident was nine percent and it was the number of two cause of death and in the era where we had the vaccine they had no money the Chinese in the late 1980s could not afford it at half the price at half the cost to make this drug to make the vaccine that sorry uh yes the vaccine the hepatitis B recombinant vaccine and and so in this instance they had very smart people who are capable of doing things so we invited engineers and scientists from Beijing and Shenzhen two different places to come to Merck they came for one year and they spent the time learning to make the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine they uh then they went back to their two cities to build two plants along with our engineers so they went together and they started this on 1994 the two plants were ready to roll to start producing to immunize all the newborns because there's so many people infected that the transmission is from mother to newborn within 48 hours if you immunize in the first 48 hours you prevent this disease and so we started in 1994 and each year they within a short time the Chinese were were vaccinated virtually everyone 100% they can do that in China and and and so Merck helped them charge them seven and a half million dollars once to pay for the the travel and the the lodgings of the of the uh Chinese but otherwise it walked away never made a penny of profit but uh it converted the number two cause of death based on 9% of people being infected with hepatitis B to less than 1% and that was done by Merck with no profit at all so there are different ways to cover the needs of global disease uh uh among global people and and uh I think it's up to the industry uh to come through and solve these things because they have it within their needs to do that and it's it is the best way to run the business Roy it's a sophisticated um set of ideas right to simultaneously think first and foremost about the patient make a fair profit where that is uh a fair and right thing to do but recognize that there are large populations and both the ivermectin story and the hepatitis B virus story in China you know you've chosen different mechanisms I'm hoping the industry continues in that light we're trying the same thing in my company with tuberculosis Ebola multiple companies have played big roles and now hopefully COVID-19 is an opportunity for the industry to do all of the above you know to come forward with um really really useful therapeutics and vaccines I'm sure they're going to do this I'm sure they're going to do it because the focus is on them that they all want to perform and be first that's good uh and uh I'm very optimistic that this is going to happen but probably not in the the time frame that our president is predicting and causing the all kinds of uh a turmoil in the press because there's no way you can get one year of safety in three months no not by the election most likely so maybe maybe to continue in that theme but shift a little bit you know the the the goal again of our our industry is to treat um the world's population I would say the the population of sick people in on the planet so but there are incentives you know in our system and they're evolving and what we witnessed over the last 30 years is this relentless decrease in the number of patients that companies seek to treat so we had a panel earlier on rare diseases um there's been as the patient numbers are dropping that we're we're treating this other relentless increase in the price per treatment uh toward those patients and for insurers to love to get your thoughts and advice to us on that like specialty versus broad primary care um and so forth so give give us your thoughts here Roy yeah well I'm not big on the specialty in the broad market because that that's not my language my my way of looking at disease is that first of all you follow the science and that is uh you enter a disease class uh with research when your scientists have some idea that the science is now right to do something about this condition and that hopefully will be a condition that has a broad impact on population you know I as a physician I am a physician by training uh I would like to do an impact the most people that I can during my lifetime and if if wanted to take uh diseases because uh globally are five or ten thousand people or or a hundred thousand people total uh you're going to have lifetime which is rather limited in the impact and and uh not so so I would like to say that follow the science the science if it starts with a small number of patients might be an entree into a whole class that it goes beyond the initial target of type of patient and disease and diseases that might be uh uh appropriate for that uh drug so so uh most importantly I think if one comes across a possibility that brings you to a rare disease take it on but don't take on too many because because they fill your pipeline and they will block more important by more important I mean diseases that are much more broadly represented in our in our society uh for instance uh uh what we need today or we need of course today to take care of this coronavirus problem uh COVID-19 but we but long term uh we're not finished with with uh cancer and while you can focus on one cancer uh with your approach that drug uh can be studied in many different cancers that may be much broader than where you begin as you understand it better uh so cancer with immuno oncology uh breaking open one area after another I think it's been going to be near term one of the major areas which might start small but become very big and hopefully cover some of the ones that are still dread cancers for which we can do damn little cross the pancreatic cancer for instance where where I think uh for whatever reason very resistant to everything that that has come along so far but still a huge problem for for society because because it's untreatable and that is relatively there's quite a bit of it around but the looming out there are the neurodegenerative diseases now uh you know the ALS is was was the target for Regeneron when they were born 1988 that was what they were going to work on and then they worked like hell for a number of years before it became clear that the science wasn't there at the time and so that was too early but neurodegenerative diseases because of the advances that have been made in universities largely where pure basic research happens uh it's coming along very rapidly now and and uh I would guess well there are two things that are happening the neurodegenerative disease that the neurosciences are moving very rapidly at the basic level to really understand the cost of the disease uh that's that's coming very rapidly and and uh I I think we'll succumb to drug discovery we are going to have drugs for that uh the psychiatric diseases as well and and the approaches that are going to be made are in part will come from genomics genomics and and and the genetics genetic studies these vast studies that are going to start pouring in not a million uh not a not a million cases of having their DNA sequence but a hundred million that's going to that's going to open up a lot of worlds and it's going to be the worlds like Helen Hobbs came up with with her PCSK9 story where she concentrated on the people who had very high and incredibly low LDL cholesterol and and found the gene that did that and then followed the the the the the mutants and studying them and came up with an entirely new class of drug and I think that approach to neurodegenerative diseases uh psychiatric diseases you know all essentially all the psychiatric drugs were found by accident I don't think anyone was designed and and so it's time when we when we have better drugs for schizophrenia for depression for all all these uh psychiatric uh diseases and and Alzheimer's disease which has had numerous attempts to go out within our industry uh I think is uh it's going to it's going to break I don't know when or where it's going to break because there's so much effort now and people are so excited about learning new things uh about about the uh biology of these diseases and that's what it's going to take new information when that becomes available I hope there will be an attack as there is on on COVID by the industry because uh what I see at my age age I'll be 91 in the next month what I see is is people suffering even though long times but they are incapable of taking care of themselves because of neurodegeneration what is happening and we need to solve that and quickly so Roy you know you said something here that's very important that you do begin programs because there's science that supports moving in that direction as you know as you experience at Merck as you see at Regeneron it was true at TheraVance it's true Merck at J&J it's it's the beginning of a project or giving birth and progressing a project is a complex process now and what role do you think you have a lot of R&D senior leaders and emerging leaders listening to you right now so what role does the R&D scientists uh the the the scientists play in beginning projects what what advice do you have here oh my god my god Matai as you know uh uh when I was at Merck uh within the first year I will tell you immodestly that I felt that I was running Merck they had Merck at that time had gone through a period where they you know they uh they had a young chemist who synthesized uh cortisone from scratch 30 30 steps uh synthesis made cortisone available and that was the beginning of the steroid era so that kind of discovery at Merck that turned that convinced management at the time that the the driving force of the company was in their research laboratory and and so what when when I when I uh was interviewed for the job at at uh work uh after the CEO Henry Gatson told me about the would like I said you know there there are a couple of questions I said you know what would happen if the company went you know the business went bad and I didn't know what I was talking about of course I was just going to be negative he said well the sales went down the tubes uh that we would cut back on the expenses for everything sales marketing manufacturing the last thing we would touch is research because science is our future this was a guy whose background was manufacturing but he that was so ingrained at at Merck and so within within months after I arrived I arrived there uh we did an experiment uh with with a beta blocker uh specific beta blocker that was doing nothing for what it was supposed to do in high blood pressure control and a friend from Yale called and said you know do you have a drug that might affect glaucoma and I said uh I don't know but we have a lot of drugs we'll bring them up he had a model of a of a uh of a uh a rabbit with glaucoma in his eye because they could put you put a chronic lidoc enzyme in the eyeball and it becomes like glaucoma and anyway we went up there in this guy who was a medical student a couple of years ahead of me at Columbia and so I knew him he was chairman of ophthalmology and and he had his model and he said uh what do we just put a drop of this uh these drugs that you have on on a rabbit eye and we put on a beta blocker uh and and the pressure just went down and I looked at that and I didn't know squat about eye eye disease but I knew what what reducing pressure was so I went back went right to the CEO and I said Henry uh we're going to have a new drug for glaucoma he said why do you want to do that I said well because I just saw that that this drug uh can reduce the intraocular pressure but and that's going to work uh he said but look you know the drugs that are being used for glaucoma are dirty I said no but you know they all cause problems when you go from light to dark uh and then you cannot accommodate to the light with this drug which is a beta blocker it will have no effect on that light to dark transition and so it won't have that side effect there will be a brand new drug it will be very important well that drug temoptic became the leading drug in in uh in the industry for 20 years and and uh so his reaction was uh okay well we'll give it to a uh when I told me what's going to be uh glaucoma he said we'll give it we'll license it to a uh and I found the company I said why would you do that he said because we're not in the eye business I said but you could be with the breakthrough drug they said they thought about it he said let's try it but that's how we got into the eye business they listened to research and I was amazed I've been in the company a year at that time and he was a CEO and I was head of drug discovery and as I say I had the feeling I was running I was running Merck from that from that time because no one ever questioned what was coming from a search maybe they should have love it Roy Roy we just have a couple minutes left and I wanted to to get your thoughts for the audience listening on just leadership um so sign there are many scientists that aspire to scientific leadership maybe they aspire to broader leadership um uh business leadership you know what advice would you have for for these um young and emerging leaders today that are steeped in science they're trained in science but they want to learn leadership what's important in scientific leadership there clearly is a deep understanding of the science and a deep understanding of disease uh because it's it's that it's that intersection where new science reveals something in a disease where you have the technology or can develop technology to affect that molecule and and the your scientific leaders are the people who can one after the other get those intersections and come up with a new mechanism of action drugs and that's what we're able to do at Merck because as I say you know it's like a baseball picking a an ace baseball player they want someone who doesn't hit an occasional uh home run but you want someone who gets on base or or hits a home run on a regular basis and and and so uh repeat repeating uh good performance and getting into fields understanding the science understanding disease is what it's about and how do you do that you can't do it alone you pick top people in science and they come from everywhere and and uh uh and and they're very special and we were very fortunate in the kinds of people who were at Merck while I was there because they did magic and and I think that's what's possible in our industry beautiful Roy I knew it would be a wonderful conversation it was exactly as I imagined so thank you very much for for taking the time to to be with us today it's genuinely appreciated thanks for time come and visit us up on the vineyard I will do I will do