Inside Thryv - A Conversation with Doug Wight, Vice President, Drug Development
Introducing Doug Wight, Thryv's Vice President, Drug Development. Join us as Doug shares his impactful journey in the field of life sciences that lead him to his pivotal role in drug development at Thryv!
Transcript - Doug Wight - Vice President, Drug Development
"My name is Doug Wight, I am Vice President, Drug Development here at Thryv. I started my academic career here is Montreal and did my graduate work at McGill. After that, I worked in academia for about 8 or 9 years. In the early 90’s I decided to move over to industry. I started with a big pharma company that was known as Sandoz at the time that has subsequently merged to become Novartis then I worked at Searle which was bought by Pharmascience and then by Pfizer. Then I moved over into a CRO which is a contract research organization and I was there for about 10 years and then made the move to a small biotech company here in Montreal called Milestone and worked there for about 12 years, and then came over to Thryv!”
What does a typical day look like for you? "My role at Thryv I’m responsible for the development of drugs, basically drug candidates are identified using basic science techniques and then once a drug candidates is identified, development starts, and it moves through preclinical development where the mechanism of action and primarily the safety of the drug are evaluated in test tube in vitro models and also in vivo in animal models. Once the drug has been determined to be safe to administer to humans, then we move into a clinical program: the phase 1, 2, and 3 programs, and that’s basically my job to manage the progress of the drug through all those development cycles until eventually you file with the regulatory agency for permission to market the drug once you have all of the safety and efficacy data.'“
What motivates you to be relentless in our mission to treat rare diseases? “Basically the reason that most of us work in the pharmaceutical industry is to try to find medicines that treat human diseases. That’s what motivates me and gets me up everyday. Particularly with rare diseases are often overlooked in the pharmaceutical industry, because you typically don’t have large profits when you are selling drugs to treat rare diseases, but often these diseases can be very debilitating to the people who are suffering from them, so that’s what motivates me: trying to find effective treatments for people that are often overlooked by the medical community.”
What are you passionate about outside of work? “A bit of a cliche but I have three adult children and four grandchildren and they all live close by so that’s really my main focus outside of work. I also have a large rural property where I do gardening and have orchards and that sort of thing, so those are really my main passions.”
Dougs message for the Thryv community: "Thryv community: we are relentlessly trying to find therapeutics for various rare diseases, primarily in cardiology. Unfortunately the process for developing a drug is quite lengthy and very expensive, so my message would be that we understand the issues you are dealing with from the various rare diseases you are suffering from, and we are working very hard and as fast as we can to try to get effective therapies on the market for you.
