Myrtle Potter

FORTUNE’s Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business
Black Health Magazine’s 25 Most Influential African Americans in Healthcare
Glamour Magazine’s Everyday Icon
Wall Street Journal’s 50 Women to Watch.

Myrtle Potter is the CEO of Sumitovant Biopharma, Inc., a global biopharmaceutical company focused on rapidly developing innovative medicines. Before she joined Sumitovant, Myrtle served as Vant Operating Chair at Roivant (2018-2019). Prior to Roviant, she was CEO of Myrtle Potter & Company, a healthcare advisory firm she started in 2005. From 2000 to 2005, Potter was COO and later President of Genentech, where she achieved record sales and earnings growth and launched seven novel therapies.

During her tenure, she co-chaired the Product Portfolio Committee, which made all asset investment and prioritization decisions for Genentech’s drug pipeline, making it the most valuable pipeline in the world at that time. Prior to Genentech, she was President of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s U.S. cardiovascular and metabolic business, where she oversaw an operation of 3,500 people and which launched numerous multi-billion-dollar medicines. Potter began her biopharmaceutical career at Merck, where she started the company Astra-Merck, Inc., which, through a series of transactions, became AstraZeneca.

Potter is a graduate of the University of Chicago and serves on the university’s board of trustees. She also serves on the boards of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, Myovant Sciences (Chairwoman) and Urovant Sciences (Chairwoman). She has previously served on the boards of Amazon, Express Scripts, Medco Health Solutions, and Rite Aid.

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.

Dean, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

As Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, Dr. Rothman, oversees both the Johns Hopkins Health System and the School of Medicine. As a rheumatologist and molecular immunologist, Dr. Rothman’s research focuses on immune system molecules known as cytokines. Specifically, he has investigated the role these molecules play in the normal development of blood cells, as well as the abnormal development of these blood cells that lead to leukemia.

William G. Kaelin Jr., M.D.

2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Kaelin is the Sidney Farber Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Senior Physician in Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Dr. Kaelin received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the American College of Physicians. Dr. Kaelin’s research seeks to understand how, mechanistically, mutations affecting tumor-suppressor genes cause cancer. His laboratory is currently focused on studies of the VHL, RB-1, and p53 tumor suppressor genes. His long-term goal is to lay the foundation for new anticancer therapies based on the biochemical functions of such proteins.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D.

2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
2008 L’Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science
2007 TIME Magazine’s 100 Most influential People

Dr. Blackburn won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for discovering the molecular nature of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving genetic information, and for co-discovering telomerase, an enzyme that maintains telomere ends.

She is the Morris Herztein Professor of Biology and Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Blackburn and her research team at UCSF work with various cells including human cells, with the goal of continued understanding of telomerase and telomere biology.
Blackburn earned her B.Sc. (1970) and M.Sc. (1972) degrees from the University of Melbourne in Australia, and her Ph.D. (1975) from the University of Cambridge in England. She did her postdoctoral work in Molecular and Cellular Biology from 1975 to 1977 at Yale.

Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D.

2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
2016 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

Anthony Atala, M.D.

Director, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine
TIME Magazine, Top Medical Breakthroughs and Discoveries

Huda Yahya Zoghbi, M.D.

2020 The Brain Prize
2017 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
2017 Canada Gairdner International Award

Dr. Zoghbi is a professor of pediatrics, molecular and human genetics, neuroscience, and neurology at Baylor College of Medicine and is director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital. Dr. Zoghbi seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying brain development and degeneration.

Working primarily in mouse models and humans, Dr. Zoghbi and her team study the activities of proteins involved in neuropsychiatric disorders such as Rett syndrome, MECP2 duplication syndrome, and mania. They also collaborate with labs studying Drosophila to study the function of proteins that accumulate in late-onset degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and inherited movement disorders such as Spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1).

The team’s goal is to find ways to reduce abnormal accumulation of proteins in degenerative conditions and normalize protein levels in developmental diseases.

Michael Rosbash, Ph.D.

2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The research of Michael Rosbash, Ph.D., focuses on the metabolism and processing of mRNA, the molecular link between DNA and protein, and ultimately led to his receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017. After arriving at Brandeis University in 1974, Dr. Rosbash began to investigate the genetic influences on circadian rhythms of the internal biological clock within species, particularly fruit flies, that helps them adapt their biological rhythm to the different phases of day and night. In 1984, he and his colleagues identified a gene that encodes a protein that accumulates during the night but is degraded during the day. They also identified additional proteins that form part of a self-regulating biological clockwork in the fruit fly’s cells. The same principles have been shown to apply to other animals and plants.

George M. Church, Ph.D.

Professor of Genetics, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School
Director, Harvard Medical School National Human Genome Research Institute’s Center of Excellence in Genomic Science
Director, Personal Genome Project, MIT’s Broad Institute and Harvard’s Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering

Harvard Professor Dr. Church, is a founding member of the Wyss Institute and director of PersonalGenomes.org, the world’s only open-access information on human genomic, environmental, and trait data.

A pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology, he developed the first methods for genome sequencing and dramatic cost reductions (from $3 billion to $600), contributing to nearly all “next-generation sequencing” methods and companies.

His team invented CRISPR for human stem cell genome editing and other synthetic biology technologies and applications, including new ways to create organs for transplantation, gene therapies for aging reversal, and gene drives to eliminate Lyme Disease and Malaria.

Dr. Church is the director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative, and the Center for Excellence in Genomic Science. He has co-authored more than 515 papers, 130 patent publications, and one book, Regenesis.