A Day in the Life of A CTO: Niven Narain, Berg
April 14, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor
Niven R. Narain is co-founder, president and chief technology officer of Berg, a Boston-based biopharma company that houses pharma, diagnostics, health analytics and biosystems divisions. His primary research interest involves cancer metabolism and merging biology and machine learning (AI) technology to gain novel insight into differences in patient populations that contribute to disease.
In addition, he is keenly interested in translating improved healthcare outcomes to improve the overall health economic impact. He is inventor of the Interrogative Biology platform that has produced and guided clinical development of lead molecules in cancer and diabetes.
We chatted with him about what makes him tick.
1. What is your hometown and do you get back there often?
I have to say I really consider Boston home now but I am a transplant from Florida (Miami/Orlando) and spent my early years in the Bahamas. I do get back to Florida often.
2. What was the last book you read and would you recommend it?
Re-read “The Old Man and the Sea,” and I would definitely recommend it. The novel highlights resilience and character in life.
3. Do you have a pet? If so, what’s its name?
4. What is your favorite food for each season?
Winter—Italian
Spring—-Japanese
Summer—American
Fall—Indian
5. What is your all-time favorite movie?
It is a tie between “Pretty Woman” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
6. How did you meet your spouse?
I met my wife in Miami at the University of Miami Medical School—however, I broke the cardinal rule, she is my best friend’s sister.
7. What are your hobbies?
Eat, Pray, Love—Oh, and travel.
8. What is your favorite part of the day?
Bedtime!
9. Your best advice for a young person coming into biotech today?
It is the most exciting time in history to be in medicine and biotech. Be humble, collaborative, and appreciate you cannot know it all. Align yourself with those who are smarter than you and work harder than everyone around you.
Always remember that that it is the patient who is the consumer and everything you do should translate to making their lives better. Science is the discovery of truth, so disagree with others in a respectful manner. These are the golden years of innovation!
Bonus Info from our Q&A
The search to discover and validate the first-ever clinical biomarker to diagnose and treat pancreatic cancer should have a lead candidate in three years, Narain told BioSpace exclusively.
Calling it an “exciting new part” of a multi-partner collaboration, Berg said that it would team up with the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, and the Pancreatic Cancer Research Team (PCRT) managed by Cancer Research And Biostatistics (CRAB) to target pancreatic cancer.
It hopes to roll Berg’s lead cancer drug, BPM 31510, into Phase II clinical trials for metastatic pancreatic cancer at more than 48 PCRT sites around the world. The news has been closely watched because BPM 31510 is one of the first cancer drugs to be guided by artificial intelligence—it works by reprogramming the metabolism of cancer cells, re-teaching them to undergo cell death.
Narain told BioSpace that with the schedule currently on track, the team hopes to have a lead biomarker to target by 2018.
“Berg will analyze samples on a rolling schedule,” said Narain. “By the third year, the teams should have a better understanding of the lead candidate biomarker.”
BioSpace Temperature Poll
After last week's news that Gilead had issued a health advisory to doctors, concern is growing after nine patients taking Harvoni or Sovaldi along with another drug, amiodarone, were treated for abnormally slow heartbeats. One of the patients died of cardiac arrest. Three of the nine patients required a pacemaker. That has BioSpace asking, what next?