Kind Ambition

He once met ambitious goals as a traveling salesman. Now Dave Fleming ’70 aims for nothing less than reforming our health care system and curing rare diseases.

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He began his career selling hospital supplies for Baxter Travenol, now Baxter International. It wasn’t glamorous, but Fleming liked interacting with people, he liked the health care environment, and he liked having sales goals he could beat.

At the end of that first year, the young salesman identified five people within Baxter who could help him reach his goals. He wrote a letter to each of them, spelling out his ambitions – management, working globally. Two years later, one of those people pulled out Fleming’s letter, interviewed him, and hired him for an international management position.

Over the next eight years, Baxter sent Fleming to some forty countries. He also earned an M.B.A. from Pepperdine University. By 1984 he was a division vice president. Instead of taking a sixth transfer with Baxter, the family of four – Peggy, Dave, and sons Brian and Steve – decided to put down roots.

Scouting around, Fleming learned that Genzyme – a biotech start-up co-founded by Termeer – was looking for a marketing person. He liked what he saw in Genzyme’s mission: to solve unmet medical needs, to truly be an innovator. "Henri’s vision was not just biotech but true health care: testing for predisposition to disease, genetic testing, diagnosis, therapy, monitoring. His approach was unique."

Biotechnology – the use of biological processes or living microorganisms in industrial production – was still a risky field. Genzyme’s revenues were relatively modest, around $5 million. Fleming signed on as the nineteenth U.S. staff member, handling domestic sales and marketing. By the end of his first week, he was on a plane to start developing operations in Japan. "From the beginning, we wanted to be global."

health care’s future

Since bringing Ceredase, now Cere-zyme, to market, Genzyme has diversified its product lines in both biopharmaceuticals and medical devices as quickly as it has grown – by approximately thirty percent per year over its twenty-year history.

"The company has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams," Fleming says. Genzyme employs more than seven thousand people. Through the first nine months of 2004, revenues were about $1.6 billion. Two firms, Amgen and Genentech, are the giants of biotech, but Genzyme considers itself one of the top five such companies.

For the last two years, readers of Science magazine have named Genzyme a top employer in the global biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields. Survey respondents gave Genzyme the highest rating for social responsibility.

When he meets job candidates, Fleming interviews them "for the job responsibilities that they will have with Genzyme five years from now, in a company quite different from the one they seek to join today. Far too often I see candidates who have set artificial limits on themselves, either feeling that they don’t have the right qualifications or aren’t worthy of the opportunity. Meanwhile, I look for the hardworking, loyal, tenacious person who believes in herself or himself and who possesses potential."

Fleming has picked up a working knowledge of genetics and disease. But the biotechnology frontier is still vast. "What we’re learning is growing exponentially, but we also understand how much we don’t know."

On the near horizon, Fleming is optimistic about fighting cancer and other diseases. "We have oncology vaccines in clinical trials. We’re working toward providing a hematologist or oncologist with a variety of treatments, so there isn’t one silver bullet but a combination of them. Chemotherapy will one day be complemented and eventually replaced by the body’s ability to let its immune system overcome cancer.

"We’re in a reactive mode (with treatments). What we’re moving toward is saying, here’s what you are predisposed to, these certain diseases or conditions. We’ll give you a vitamin pill and another pill that addresses those predispositions."

What about ethical issues, the politically and emotionally charged questions of genetic testing, stem-cell research, cloning?

"The answer is to have open, transparent dialogue about these issues," Fleming says. "Bring the best and brightest experts together to craft responsible, comprehensive guidelines. Our industry has a huge responsibility, and we must be very careful. The key thing is to act responsibly."

He still has his list of goals to pursue, from reforming public policy to bringing medicine to more needy families.

Which is why Fleming even agreed to tell his story. "Every time an article is written about Genzyme and Gaucher treatment, we get a flood of inquiries from parents or friends of children who have been diagnosed with or have the symptoms of Gaucher, Fabry, or MPS 1.

"We bring families hope, and patients the opportunity of a normal life."

Write Dave: David.fleming@genzyme.com

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