Cancer conquering CEO

From the pages of In Business magazine.

Kevin Conroy’s focus on the early detection of cancer has won him praise in many quarters, but so have the results. When your company, Exact Sciences Corp., has a flagship product, Cologuard, that has been used to screen 2.6 million people for colorectal cancer, and it has detected an estimated 12,000 early-stage cancers and roughly 84,000 pre-cancerous polyps to date, you’ve definitely made a cancer-fighting impact.

In 2019, Conroy and his fast-growing molecular diagnostics company continued their cancer-fighting march with a number of organizational milestones that have positioned it to conquer different types of cancer. Simply put, Conroy leads a local company that’s on an impressive roll with an increasingly robust financial performance and sparkling new facilities that include a new headquarters it will occupy early next year.

Having nearly reached the 3 million mark in the number of people who have been screened with Cologuard, its noninvasive, molecular screening test for the detection of colorectal cancer, and with a promising new cancer-fighting partnership with Genomic Health, a highly regarded California company, the sky appears to be the limit. All of this follows a fruitful co-marketing agreement with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer that has helped spread awareness of Cologuard in physicians’ offices nationwide.

That Conroy, the chairman and CEO of Exact Sciences, has produced results with a multidimensional leadership style is no surprise to industry observers. Last year, Conroy joined a list of life-science luminaries when BioForward Wisconsin, a state association advocating on behalf of member life-science firms, presented him with its Wisconsin Biohealth Business Achievement Award, which recognizes leadership and innovation.

“What makes it impressive is that he can do all those things,” says Lisa Johnson, CEO of BioForward Wisconsin. “He can acquire a company like Genomic Health. He can negotiate partnerships like the one with Pfizer. He obviously had to negotiate with the government just to get the test kit through the whole Food and Drug Administration process, but what makes him the leader he has become is his approach and driving down his philosophy into the organization. Whenever I talk to anyone at Exact Sciences, they are just so proud of what they do.”

The prep work

It seems obvious how Conroy’s previous professional roles as a CEO for Third Wave Technologies, a molecular diagnostics company that was acquired by Hologic Inc., and as an intellectual property attorney for GE Healthcare and an intellectual property litigator helped prepare him for this role with Exact Sciences, but he can cite less-than-obvious ways these experiences helped him build the company. His legal training taught him to think through complex problems, his brief time in the early-stage startup world in California introduced him to entrepreneurship and rigorous business thinking, and his days at GE were like taking a “mini MBA,” he says. “The combination of those things helped me figure out how to lead both innovation and a more mature business.”

Exact Sciences will have more opportunity to mature after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Cologuard for eligible average-risk patients age 45 and older. A rise of colon cancer in adults under age 50 has sparked the FDA to approve the use of Cologuard for eligible members of this population, and FDA approval follows a May 2019 American Cancer Society recommendation to screen younger patients for colorectal cancer. Between 2004 and 2015, more than 130,000 cases of colorectal cancer were diagnosed in individuals under age 50. Among those, more than half were diagnosed at an advanced stage (stages III or IV) when survival rates are low.

With this expansion, Cologuard can now be used by about 19 million average-risk people between the ages of 45 to 49. Colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. with more than 50,000 deaths each year, is recognized as the most preventable yet least prevented form of cancer. When diagnosed in the earliest stages, nine out of 10 people survive more than five years, but only one out of 10 people survive more than five years when the disease is discovered in later stages.

The expanded market creates more opportunities for Exact Sciences, but it also means the company’s workforce growth — it now employs 2,300 people and counting — is hardly done. “We hired 640 people last quarter, and we’ve hired 1,600 new people this year,” Conroy notes. “Over 80 percent of those were in Madison. It’s really been a tremendous opportunity because you have so many people coming to Madison every year to go to the University of Wisconsin or Madison College.

“With other recruitment programs, we’ve been able to fill the positions that are important for us to fill,” he adds. “That’s just part of having a compelling mission as a company. There are a lot of people who are energized about working at Exact Sciences because of the impact that we can have. A lot of our people come from word-of-mouth and referrals. That has been successful, so we haven’t felt an acute labor shortage and we hope we never do.”

Exact Sciences, which still has hundreds of job openings, has created a complete database of open jobs to help people apply online [at careers.exactsciences.com]. It also has partnered with the Urban League of Greater Madison to operate training academies and expose job-seekers and those considering a career change to opportunities within the company’s lab and customer-care teams.

The use of robotics for certain repetitive tasks such as box cutting and labeling has helped ease the labor crunch to some extent, while having the added benefit of increasing Exact Sciences’ attractiveness as an employer because staff can focus on more sophisticated lab and scientific work. “Adding automation has only helped us grow as a company, and it’s created a greater demand for people because our business has been more successful,” Conroy explains. “It also creates a significant opportunity for engineers, for mechanical, electrical, software engineers, and technical roles. In the same year [2019] that we invested the most in automation, we also had the highest number of new roles that we hired for.”

It doesn’t hurt that Exact Sciences was named one of the 2019 Best Workplaces for Women at a time when the life-science industry is trying to diversify. “The company can grow because so many people want to work there,” adds Johnson. “Kevin makes things happen to grow that company, and the thing we’re really proud of from BioForward’s perspective is that he did it in Wisconsin. He proved to all of us that you can build this in Wisconsin.”

(Continued)

Cancer-fighting partners

Conroy has built Exact Sciences with the help of partnerships established with the likes of Pfizer and the Mayo Clinic, which have helped Exact Sciences extend its marketing reach and further validate the technology behind Cologuard. However, it’s the planned $2.8 billion acquisition of Redwood City, California-based Genomic Health that raises a number of intriguing cancer-fighting possibilities. While exact Sciences is known for its DNA-based testing kit, Genomic Health’s calling card is a lead product called Oncotype DX, a precision medicine tool that helps medical professionals predict how a patient will respond to chemotherapy and what therapies work best for patients with various types of cancer, including colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer.

Under Conroy’s direction, Exact Sciences has placed a much larger target on other types of cancer, and Conroy views Genomic Health as the perfect partner because it’s changing the way cancer is treated. Oncotype DX is used with early stage breast cancer patients to inform them of the likelihood of benefitting from chemotherapy, and many go directly to surgery alone with great confidence that they won’t be harmed by avoiding chemotherapy.

To put it in perspective, Conroy says that if a breast-cancer patient has a low score on the Oncotype DX test, they have only a 1 percent chance of benefitting from chemotherapy. This has been validated in large trials, most recently a 10,000-patient clinical trial that really answered the question because most women with the most common type of breast cancer don’t benefit from chemotherapy, yet they suffer lifelong impacts if chemotherapy has been part of their treatment.

“It’s a great company with a fantastic lead test, their Oncotype DX test for breast cancer,” Conroy states. “It’s an amazing test that has helped decrease the use of chemotherapy.”

Not only has Genomic Health totally changed the way breast cancer is treated in the U.S., it’s now beginning to do the same thing around the world, Conroy marvels. “They have amazing scientists. They rely on the most advanced science to help make the lives of their customers much better. We would call this a precision oncology approach to cancer.”

By combining Exact Sciences’ research-and-development capabilities with those of Genomic Health, Conroy believes the combined companies can change the way other cancers are diagnosed and treated here and internationally.

“They have about 100 people outside of the U.S. that are doing pretty incredible things in bringing their technologies and products to oncologists all over the world,” he states. “They have had over 1 million patients treated or tested with their test.”

That a Wisconsin biotech would be in a position to acquire a Bay Area genomics company represents more than a role reversal — in the past, it was more common for young tech companies in Wisconsin to covet the attention of would-be buyers in California — it advanced the state’s image as a health-tech leader.

“There was a time when the traffic was heading in the other direction,” notes Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. “Often times, Wisconsin biotech and medical-tech companies would begin here and then move to take advantage of different opportunities. Not only have we seen that slow down, and increasingly those companies see good reasons to stay, the Exact Sciences deal with Genomic Health was an out-and-out reversal of the trend and a really heartening one because it showed that Wisconsin really has all the elements it takes to be a health-tech center.”

Exact Science’s recent network building doesn’t end with Genomic Health. Its co-promotion partnership with Pfizer is beginning to allow the Madison company to “max out” on Cologuard’s commercial potential. Under the agreement, Pfizer will invest up to $24 million to boost Cologuard sales through 2021. The key benefit to this partnership is Pfizer’s reach across the U.S. in primary care physician’s offices. It has helped Exact Sciences gain significant ground in those offices and other places where care is administered, as nearly 12,000 health-care providers ordered their initial Cologuard test during the third quarter. That brings the total number to 185,000 since the test was launched.

“Our customer base of health-care providers has increased as a result of the partnership,” Conroy states. “The awareness of Cologuard and knowledge of Cologuard in those offices has increased, and our ability to educate the general public about the need for screening and Cologuard’s role in colorectal cancer screening has increased because of Pfizer’s tremendous ability to educate consumers.”

The future appears to be extremely bright for Exact Sciences because of the various kinds of cancer it is targeting beyond colon cancer and the potential markets they represent. Its quarterly financial report notes that biomarkers — substances whose presence is indicative of certain diseases or conditions — have been discovered, and new cancer tests are under development, for 15 cancers. They include breast, cervical, lung, esophageal, liver, pancreatic, prostate, ovarian, stomach, and uterine cancer. Tom Still, who has covered the technology scene for years, first as a reporter and editor and now as leader of the Wisconsin Technology Council, which advises the state legislature and governor on technology legislation, believes Exact Sciences has a bright future because the science behind it is so strong. “They were identifying new and different ways to pinpoint cancers at early stages well before others,” Still says. “The combination of the science that already existed through Exact Sciences, and then the technology that was carried over from Third Wave Technologies, is a powerful combination.”

Facilitating growth

In June, the company officially opened the doors to its new, 169,000-square-foot clinical laboratory and warehouse on Madison’s near west side. The new lab will process Cologuard and help bring the total Cologuard processing capacity to 7 million tests per year, and it unites many core business functions within a common campus. Both the lab and the new headquarters appear to be arriving in the nick of time. The company’s financial results have steadily risen each quarter of 2019, and with the addition of Genomic Health, it is on track to reach $1.6 billion in annual revenue next year. “As we continue to grow, we’ll have to grow our facilities,” Conroy notes. “We have additional room at the new site. Not an infinite amount of space, but additional room.”

The company might not have progressed quite this far had it remained part of the troubled Judge Doyle Square redevelopment. Conroy is rooting for the city to produce a quality development there, but when looking forward to his new digs, he hasn’t really looked back at the JDS disappointment. He also credits city alders and former mayor Paul Soglin and new Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway for being tremendous partners for the company.

“Truthfully, we haven’t looked back on that decision. We haven’t had time to,” he says. “We are very happy about the location and the design and flexibility of the new headquarters site. It would have been great to be downtown, but we love where we are in the research park. The new headquarters is going to be a wonderful place to work.”

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