Ex­clu­sive: Roger Perl­mut­ter on the biggest prob­lem in Big Phar­ma, leav­ing Mer­ck, and build­ing Eikon

HAY­WARD, Calif. — Af­ter Roger Perl­mut­ter stepped down as Mer­ck’s head of R&D in 2021, he took a sin­gle week­end off be­fore start­ing at Eikon Ther­a­peu­tics, where as CEO he leads one of the in­dus­try’s most valu­able pri­vate­ly held com­pa­nies, build­ing mi­cro­scopes and de­vel­op­ing drugs.

Eikon stud­ies the “so­cial lives of pro­teins,” Perl­mut­ter says, watch­ing how they move about cells, and then us­ing those learn­ings to make bet­ter drugs. End­points News got an ex­clu­sive look in­side the four-year-old com­pa­ny in No­vem­ber from Perl­mut­ter, now 71.

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