Alkermes (ALKS) was founded by Michael Wall, an electrical engineer and Floyd Bloom, a neuroscientist, with the aim of finding a way to get drugs past the blood brain barrier. It was the late 80s and the scientists were eager to do for neuroscience what had been done for cardiovascular disease. Only the so-called blood brain barrier was blocking the way for most pharmaceuticals to get into the brain. By 1991, when CEO Richard Pops joined, the company had 20 people and it was in the clinic with a compound for brain malignancies, called gliomas….
